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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN 
TWO WARS 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS 
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 

TORONTO 



THE GERMAN EMPIRE 
BETWEEN TWO WARS 

A STUDY OF THE POLITICAL AND SOCIAL 

DEVELOPMENT OF THE NATION 

BETWEEN 1871 AND 1914 



BY 
ROBERT HERNDON FIFE, Jr. 

PROFESSOR IN WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY 



Neto 'jBoxk 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1916 

All rights reserved 






Copyright, 1916, 
By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Set up and electrotyped. Published April, X916. 



fl^J 



Norinoot) i|res0 

J. 8. Gushing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 

Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



APR 27 1916 

ICI.A427844 



TO 
MY FATHER AND MOTHER 

IN LOVE AND HONOR 



PREFACE 

No political development in the past half-century has 
been so striking as the growth of the German empire. 
Such a statement is the merest platitude to-day when 
the world is being rocked to its foundation by the fright- 
ful readjustment which may be traced mainly to this 
cause. It is, perhaps, equally trite to say that hand in 
hand with this growth there has gone forward an evolu- 
tion within the empire which is just as striking. Year 
after year as the nation went on adding to its population 
and piling up matchless resources in industry and com- 
merce and still greater possibilities in the training of its 
scientists and men of affairs it also added tremendously 
to its burdens and problems. To the growing dangers 
without there were added dangers within, caused by the 
ever sharpening strife between feudalism and democ- 
racy, agriculture and commerce, industry and labor. 
The unstable equilibrium thus caused might long since 
have toppled to a fall had not the rise in power without 
been accompanied by a growing devotion to national 
unity and national ambitions. 

Out of the turmoil of Germany's foreign and domestic 
struggles there has stood forth more and more clearly 
a great contrast, the contrast between the progress of 
the nation along economic lines and its arrest in political 
and social development. It was this contrast, which 
has struck the attention of so many observers, that sug- 
gested the present work. To an American committed 
to the principles of democracy it was of the greatest 
interest to learn why a people that has shown itself so 



viii PREFACE 

hospitable to every new idea in science should have put 
off so long the liberalizing of its chief public institu- 
tions. In a period that saw the political evolution of so 
many lands from Portugal to China what was it that 
made a nation standing at the apex of modern culture 
tolerate so much that is reactionary in political and 
social life ? 

Upon closer study, several things became at once 
clear. First, that the causes underlying Germany's ap- 
parent lack of inner development are closely inter- 
woven with the foreign relations of the empire. It 
also appeared that much of Germany's conservatism 
is only apparent and that the same ultra-modern and 
radical attitude exists in many sides of the political 
and social life of the nation as has made itself so notice- 
able in its economic life. Lastly, it was seen that the 
nation's political progress in recent years has by no 
means been so slow as it has seemed and that there 
exist many liberal and democratic tendencies that only 
await a favorable moment to come to the surface. 

This book is the result of these studies and is an 
attempt to bring American readers nearer to an under- 
standing of present-day Germany, as it has appeared to 
the writer. It has been necessary, first of all, to sketch 
the history of the nation's foreign relations since the 
treaty of Frankfort. Here the author makes no claim 
to originality : he has merely sought to tell as fairly 
as possible the well-known story of the growth of the 
empire amid friendly and hostile neighbors and to show 
how national unity and ambition grew with power and 
prestige. The second part has then been devoted to a 
study of the imperial government in its relation to the 
emperor and the parties. Especially the latter are dis- 
cussed in history and purpose in some detail to show 
how the development of free institutions has been 
checked by the growth of bitter class hatred and by 
the acute economic rivalry that came with the increase 
of population and national wealth. A third part treats 
of some of the chief inner difficulties with which the 



PREFACE ix 

national spirit has had to contend in its growth. In a 
fourth section certain changes and tendencies in three 
pubHc institutions have been studied. The city, the 
school and the press illustrate in a peculiar way the 
conservatism and progress so typical of present-day 
Germany, Each, however, differs so widely from its 
American counterpart that it has been necessary to 
give in some detail the striking features of each. No 
originality is, of course, claimed for the sketches of 
municipal government or school administration, but an 
effort has been made in each case to put the German 
system before the American reader as simply as pos- 
sible. In this section history plays naturally a less 
important role than in the earlier parts ; instead, I have 
tried to present clearly the most striking tendencies 
now working in these institutions. 

It is hardly necessary to add that this is not a war 
book. It was conceived in peace and deals with years 
of peace ; and while particularly in the first part the 
shadow of war necessarily falls across its pages, events 
since the call to arms have been mentioned only when 
necessary to illustrate tendencies that belong to the 
years before. With the lowering of the banner of peace 
which for forty-three years waved over Germany in its 
forward march along the ways of political evolution as 
well as material and scientific progress, a chapter in the 
nation's history was closed, and certainly when Mars 
no longer rules the hour, another and a very different 
chapter will be opened. It is not the purpose of this 
book to try to lift the veil from the future. It must be 
remembered, however, that no people is more deeply 
conservative and reverent of the past than the Germans, 
and that whatever the future may hold in store as the 
result of the present titanic conflict, the Germany of 
the future will be an organic growth out of the Germany 
of the present, and the deeds and struggles described in 
the following pages will form the basis of the new time. 

The author is well aware that anything that is pub- 
lished about Germany at the present time runs the risk 



X PREFACE 

of being looked upon as propaganda of one sort or an- 
other. Certainly nothing is further from his purpose, 
and those who seek here a general arraignment of Ger- 
many or an apology for her acts and motives will be 
disappointed. For those who can lay aside the preju- 
dices of the moment and seek in a spirit of impartiality 
to understand the immediate past of Germany and its 
people, it is hoped that this work will be of help. At 
the same time, it is not a mere record of scientific facts, 
but a study by an American for Americans of the prog- 
ress and problems of a contemporary nation. Under 
such circumstances it is not possible to lay aside alto- 
gether the glasses of national prejudice, and the author 
does not claim to have done so. Nor has he been able 
to hide a deep and abiding faith in free institutions nor 
a sympathy for the forces of democracy in German life. 
He is satisfied if his work shows something of the spirit 
of tolerance, the highest virtue to which the student of 
a foreign culture can aspire. This spirit realizes that 
every national ideal, ambition or prejudice has deep 
roots in the nation's history that explain and to a greater 
or less degree justify it. It knows also that no institu- 
tion can be praised or blamed until it is fully understood 
in its relation to the nation's past ; still less can a whole 
people be indicted or extolled until its opportunities and 
difficulties have been thoroughly weighed. Finally, it 
takes as the safest philosophy the sublime admonition 
of the Sermon on the Mount: "Judge not that ye be 
not judged ! " 

An effort has been made to present a readable book. 
For this reason statistics have been cut down to the 
lowest point possible for clearness of illustration and 
everything in the way of learned apparatus has been 
kept out. It would be idle to try to name authorities. 
The study of Germany and German life has been my 
earnest occupation for many years, and in giving a pic- 
ture of recent German history I have laid under tribute 
every source that has been enjoyed : years of study and 
travel in Germany, the association with German friends 



PREFACE xi 

and particularly the reading through many years of the 
German periodical press. 

In conclusion it must be said that any such work as 
this is of course a fragment. It is not possible to put 
into one book the spirit of a nation. The purpose of 
the work will be fulfilled if it makes plain a few sides 
of the life of a great people in the throes of development. 

Grateful acknowledgment is due to my colleague, Pro- 
fessor George M. Dutcher, for a careful revision of the 
entire proof, where his criticisms and suggestions have 
been of the greatest importance. To another colleague, 
Professor C. H. Conley, who has kindly read the proof, 
I also owe a number of valuable suggestions. Dr. George 
Kartzke, now of Yale University, has given me helpful 
hints regarding the subject-matter of parts of Chapters 
XV and XVI. The Rev. Stanislas Musiel of Middle- 
town, Conn., has kindly helped with information regard- 
ing Polish words and proper names. 

Thanks are due to the editor of the North American 
Review for permission to reprint a part of Chapter II. 

To my wife I am sincerely grateful for constant help 
and encouragement throughout the writing of the book. 
In the preparation of the index she has done the greater 
part of the work. 



CONTENTS 



PART I 
THE EMPIRE ABROAD 

CHAPTER PACK 

I. The French Mortgage 3 

II. Allies and Enemies to the East ... 26 

III. The Rivalry with England 50 

IV. Expansion and Ambitions 72 



PART II 

THE EMPIRE AT HOME 

V. Personal Government and Parliamentary Rule 10 i 
VI. The Government and the Parties . . .114 

VII. Feudalism and Agriculture 139 

VIII. Liberalism and Industry 159 

PART III 

THE EMPIRE'S PROBLEMS 

IX. The Proletarian in Politics . , . . 177 

X. The Church in Politics 200 

XI. The Conquered Provinces 217 

XII. The Polish Question . - o ^ . • 234 



xiv CONTENTS 



PART IV 
TRANSFORMATIONS AND TENDENCIES 

CHAPTER PAGB 

XIII. The Rule of the Cities 269 

XIV. The City as a Business and Social Agent 



XV. Conservatism and Progress in Education 
XVI. State and Church in the Schools . 
XVII. The Press and Public Opinion . 



294 
317 
336 
359 



PART I 
THE EMPIRE ABROAD 



CHAPTER I 

The French Mortgage 

"Soldiers of the Q;prman army, I leave to-day the 
soil of France, on which the German name has won so 
many of war's honors and where so much beloved blood 
has flowed." With these words telegraphed from Nancy 
on March 15, 187 1, Emperor William the Victorious, as 
the Germans are fond of calling him, bade farewell to 
the German soldiers who still occupied French fortresses. 
Peace had been made and the conditions had just been 
confirmed by the French national assembly hastily sum- 
moned to meet at Bordeaux. Alsace and a part of 
Lorraine had already become to all intents and purposes 
German territory. Thiers, the temporary head of what 
government there still was in France, had 3delded to 
Bismarck's hard conditions only when yielding seemed 
necessary in order to prevent the complete dismember- 
ment of France, and the aged statesman was already 
considering plans to raise the thousand million dollars 
war indemnity and so remove the German army of oc- 
cupation. 

The German conditions on which the war of 1870-71 
was brought to an end were hard, but they proceeded 
from a policy which is at least comprehensible. It is a 
common fallacy to suppose that Emperor William and 
Bismarck weakened and humihated France as revenge 
for the humiliations put upon Prussia by the great 
Napoleon at Jena and after. There is no doubt that 
Prussian and Saxon hearts burned with a wild and 
justifiable joy when the nephew of the great Corsican 

3 



4 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

was carried off a prisoner to a German chateau, and 
French arms, which had brought so much humiliation 
and sorrow to Germany, were themselves humbled into 
/the dust. It was, however, no such sentimental con- 
siderations as these which dictated the treaty of Frank- 
fort in 1 87 1, but a resolute determination to secure for 
generations to come the new-forged German empire 
against French revenge for the defeats before Metz 
and the frightful catastrophe to French arms at Sedan. 
In fact, in the appropriation of French territory the 
German general staff under the leadership of the great 
tactician Moltke insisted on taking more than the 
statesman Bismarck had wished to demand. Not only 
were Alsace to the height of the Vosges mountains and 
the German part of Lorraine to be ceded, but the new 
boundary was to dip to the westward and include Metz, 
which had been won with so much blood. Thus the 
two strongest fortresses west of the Rhine — Strasburg, 
the eye of the upper Rhine valley, and Metz, the key 
to the upper Moselle — were to be a barrier against the 
French advance when the war for revenge should really 
come. ;^^ ; 

"France will consider any peace simply as an armis- 
tice," wrote Bismarck immediately after Sedan; and 
he firmly believed that the revenge idea would become 
dominant as soon as the urgent business of the day was 
disposed of. In this faith it seemed the highest patriotic 
duty to provide that that business should be heavy 
enough to give the young German empire time to work 
out its problems, and to soften the suspicions of Bavaria, 
Wiirtemberg and some of the smaller states into a com- 
mon German patriotism. Hence Bismarck laid upon 
the demand for the two provinces another for a billion 
dollars, to be paid in three years, a drain which in the 
opinion of himself and his councillors would give France 
so much to do that her financial recovery would be a 
matter of generations. 



/ 



THE FRENCH MORTGAGE 5 

In this he was mistaken. In recent years it has 
ceased to be the fashion to picture France as a decadent 
nation. Those who still incline to this opinion should 
read over the wonderful process of recovery and growth 
which make up the history of the first decades of the 
third republic. At the end of the "terrible year" 
in the spring of 1871 France found herself sunk to the 
position of a fourth or fifth rate power, over half a milKon 
of her fighting youth killed or wounded or in hospitals, 
a milhon and a half of her sturdiest and most progressive 
people lost to the French name and tongue. Such was 
the energy, however, with which Thiers and his cabinet 
met the situation that within nine months after peace 
was concluded, two-fifths of the war indemnity had 
been paid, and in September, 1873, the last sou of a sum 
which was for that time colossal was turned into the 
German treasury and the last German helmet left French 
soil. Even in view of the much greater sums to which 
the world has become accustomed during the great 
European war, it is astonishing to read that in July, 
1872, the French government actually refused eight 
billions of dollars oversubscribed on a five per cent loan. 
The energy which justified this immense credit also 
showed itself in the recreation of the army. In De- 
cember, 1872, the French miHtary forces were reorganized 
on the Prussian system with a five-year compulsory 
miHtary service ; in May of the following year competent 
observers already judged the French army stronger than 
before the war. 

It would not have been natural had Germany watched 
this process of new growth with anything approach- 
ing satisfaction. All German statesmen and soldiers 
were thoroughly obsessed with the idea that France 
was only biding its time for revenge, and each new step 
in the development of the new republic was accompanied 
by warnings and threats from across the Vosges. In 
1872 Moltke predicted war for the following spring; 



6 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

two years later, during the strenuous days of the Kultur- 
kampf, Bismarck threatened France with war on account 
of pro-clerical agitation across the border. In 1875 ^ 
regular campaign was begun in the Berlin Post, then as 
now distinguished for its chauvinism, and continued in 
that and other journals for months. France had added 
a fourth battahon to its military organization, making 
an addition of 144,000 men, and German generals talked 
of striking at once before the republic could complete 
its preparations. How much of this agitation, which 
went on for months in spite of the anxious protestations 
of Decazes, the French ambassador at Berhn, was based 
on nervousness and intended by Bismarck as a serious 
warning to the Gallic people, how much was a part of the 
political game at home, cannot be said. It had one re- 
sult which Bismarck did not foresee : it brought about 
the first drawing together between the young republic 
and Russia. Czar Alexander II, beset by the anxious 
entreaties of Decazes, intervened tactfully with the Ger- 
man court and satisfied himself at least that he had pre- 
vented a war. 

It is impossible not to sympathize with a gaUant nation 
enduring humiliations such as those which France suf- 
fered from Germany during the "terrible year" and the 
decade following; but it is not worth while discussing 
what might have been the results of a different poHcy at 
the close of the war. The triumphant war-lords who 
gathered around Emperor William's council table at Ver- 
sailles in the winter of 1871 would not consent to offer 
France, prostrate and helpless, the same generous treat- 
ment which had been accorded the fraternally related 
Austria in 1866, and in view of the bitter humiliations 
which German lands and particularly Prussia had suffered 
from French arms within the memory of their venerable 
sovereign, such generosity 'would have been more than 
human. Even if France had been spared the loss 
of her territory, it is doubtful whether she, Hke a good 



THE FRENCH MORTGAGE 7 

sportsman, would have learned to forget her temporary 
humiliation as Russia has forgotten Sevastopol and 
Austria Sadowa, allowing the dreams of revenge to be 
swallowed up in new international interests. Anyway, 
Bismarck on behalf of the new empire was not prepared 
to take any risks, and with the annexation of Alsace and 
Lorraine all hope of a friendly relation within the Hfe- 
time of any of the actors in the drama disappeared. This 
may also explain the vigorous elbowings which the Iron 
Chancellor gave the young republic while it was still 
struggling against the wolves of anarchy in the Commune 
and trying to estabhsh itself against royalist intrigues. 
"The kindly affections," said Bismarck to his secretary 
Busch, "have as little place in the calculations of politics 
as they have in those of business." 

"Toujours y penser, jamais en parler/^ "ever present 
in thought, but never to be spoken of," said Gambetta in 
speaking of la revanche, and it is certain that dreams of 
revenge were never very far absent from a multitude of 
French hearts in the forty-odd years of peace. That 
they did not play a more important part in France's 
foreign policy was due in the main to two causes : the 
conquest of power by the business class in the late seven- 
ties and the complete outstripping of France by Germany 
in the growth of population and in industrial develop- 
ment. 

The French bourgeoisie is like the middle class every- 
where, peace loving to the last degree. After the resig- 
nation of MacMahon and the passing of the hopes of 
royalty in 1879 a succession of men came to the helm 
in the republic who had everything to lose and nothing 
to gain by war. For the Ferrys, the Waldeck-Rousseaus, 
the Loubets and Briands and Poincares, grown up over 
lawyers' briefs and problems of civic administration, no 
laurel crowns waved before the cannon's mouth. And 
in this they fully represented their constituents. That, 
however, the bitter experiences of the early seventies. 



/ 



8 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

which made so deep a mark on French character, remained 
unforgotten and unforgiven in French hearts cannot be 
doubted. It was not because the French people had 
grown less honor-loving that it held revenge plans in the 
background. The honor of a business man consists first 
of all in paying his debts, protecting his family from dis- 
aster and laying up a balance for a rainy day ; and the 
French "neo-bourgeoisie" in the saddle of the third 
republic preserved a business man's poise in the midst 
of all the noise and hubbub of Boulanger episodes, anti- 
semitic propaganda of Dreyfus days and Morocco jingo- 
ism. At least three times after the establishment of the 
parliamentary republic France and Germany seemed on 
the edge of a struggle : once in 1887, when the adventurer 
Boulanger was seeking to make himself dictator by ap- 
pealing to French jingoes, and twice during the Morocco 
episode — ^in 1905 when the French minister Delcasse 
interposed determined resistance to Germany's demands 
for an international conference and again in the summer 
of 191 1 after a German cruiser had been sent to the 
Moroccan port Agadir. In each of these crises the 
difficulties dissolved before the cool second thought of 
the French people. Boulanger was driven into exile, 
Delcasse was forced into temporary retirement, and the 
Moroccan negotiations were accompanied by a reserve 
on the part of the French people that made war impossi- 
ble. 

But it was not merely the fact that the individual 
Frenchman had grown wealthy, and from the Norman 
peasant with his well-filled woollen sock to the richest 
stockholder of Paris had much more to lose than in 1870, 
that made French statesmen and electors cling to a pacific 
policy for more than forty years in the face of elbowing 
and toe-treading from German diplomacy. With the 
eyes of business men Frenchmen saw clearly enough the 
growing risks of a war with Germany. In 1870 the popu- 
lation of France was almost equal to that of Prussia and 



THE FRENCH MORTGAGE 9 

her German allies : after that time the population of the 
republic remained almost stationary, while that of Ger- 
many in the forty-three years following the treaty of 
Frankfort increased sixty-seven per cent. In spite of the 
falling off in the birth-rate in Germany, which has been 
especially apparent since 1900, the decrease in the death- 
rate since the introduction of compulsory workingmen's 
insurance in the eighties has been more than suf&cient 
to maintain the general increase in the population. In 
the period from 1881 to 1890, during which the various 
systems of compulsory workingmen's insurance were 
introduced, the excess of births over deaths was 11.7 
per thousand; in the period from 1901 to 1910, when 
the full result of these systems was for the first time visi- 
ble, the surplus was 14.3 per thousand, striking enough 
when it is noted that in the same period the birth-rate 
declined from 38.2 to 33.9 per thousand. On the basis 
of these figures German statisticians have been accus- 
tomed to estimate that before 1925 the Fatherland would 
have a population of over eighty millions and even then 
be considerably less densely populated than other indus- 
trial countries, Uke England or Belgium. In France 
there were in this period several years when deaths totaled 
more than births. It is not to be wondered at that Ger- 
many's growing preponderance in men capable of bearing 
arms was a factor which grew more and more important 
in its bearing on French plans and ambitions. 

Even more important than this to thinking Frenchmen 
was the solidification of national feeling and the central- 
ization in mihtary affairs that went hand in hand with 
this bounding forward of Germany's population, and as 
the years went by far surpassed the most enthusiastic 
dreams of 1870. The military spirit, which in that year 
was markedly Prussian, or at least North German, pene- 
trated by degrees to the most distant valleys of the Bava- 
rian and Swabian highlands. Where once in the smaller 
states a vague enthusiasm for German unity among the 



10 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

people forced their rulers, jealous of Prussia, to cast in 
their fortunes with the North German confederation 
against France, now dynasties and people with ardent 
patriotism have come to look upon the empire under the 
hegemony of Prussia and the leadership of the Hohen- 
zollern war-lord as a mighty entity, in comparison with 
which the boundaries which divide Wiirtemberg and 
Baden and Hesse have only insignificant importance. 

If the growth in population and resources and the solid- 
ification of the national spirit of their neighbor across the 
Vosges impressed the French banker and lawyer states- 
men, still less could they close their eyes to the vast 
military organization upon which Germany worked un- 
ceasingly after the peace of 1871. Forced by the logic 
of events to exist as a nation by the power of the sword, 
united Germany was obliged to keep it always in readiness. 
Again and again the French dreams of revenge were held 
up to force from the Reichstag military concessions, which 
in the early days of the empire Clerical and Liberal 
groups were unwilling to grant. Thus in 1874, upon the 
introduction into France of enforced military service 
after the Prussian model, with the incorporation of a 
fourth battahon into the regimental cadre and the work- 
ing out of a new line of defences on the eastern frontier, 
the German legislative body passed the Septennat, pro- 
viding for a military budget for seven years with a peace 
establishment of one per cent of the population. In 
1887 in a fight for a renewal of the Septennat and a further 
increase in the peace establishment, Bismarck declared 
in the Reichstag: "Not a single voice in France has re- 
signed hopes of recovering Alsace and Lorraine ; at any 
moment a government may come to the rudder which will 
begin war," and he asserted that in case of such a war 
each party would try to bleed the other to exhaustion. 
This brutal statement had its effect, and a national wave 
of patriotism swept the opposition away. Again in the 
early nineties, when France's long period of isolation had 



THE FRENCH MORTGAGE ii 

come to an end through the alliance with Russia, Bis- 
marck's successor Caprivi turned this to account in carry- 
ing through a further increase in the number of recruits 
which were each year called to the colors ; once more in 
191 2, following on the troubled summer of the preceding 
year, when a conflict with France over Morocco seemed 
almost unavoidable, the war department obtained from 
the Reichstag, with only the Socialists and anti-national 
groups in opposition, important increases in the peace 
footing of artillery and cavalry and a big subsidy for 
aviation. 

After 191 2 Germany's arming had nothing directly to 
do with France. As we shaU see, in the previous decade 
the eyes of German statesmen had been turning more and 
more toward the southeast. The outbreak of the first 
Balkan War in the fall of 191 2 and the victorious progress 
of the Balkan Alliance toward Constantinople made a 
great danger suddenly loom up in the D anube lands. The 
creation of the closely welded league of small states, some 
of which were certainly under Russian influence, made 
the position of Germany's aUy, Austria, and consequently 
of Germany herself, precarious, and the Kaiser's ministers 
were obliged to take immediate and drastic measures to 
restore the threatened balance of power. It is, however, 
noteworthy that in introducing into the Reichstag the 
Defense Bill in April, 1913, the Chancellor, Bethmann- 
Hollweg, called attention once more to the mortgage of 
French hatred, and that the chamber in voting additions 
to the army aggregating 136,000 officers and men, besides 
an immense amount of war material, did so with a 
clear appreciation of the fact that while a new danger 
drew all eyes toward the southeast, it was impossible to 
relax for one moment the watch upon the western bound- 
ary. The sudden danger to the Fatherland's security 
and aspirations called for a great sacrifice, and the sacrifice 
was cheerfully made. Upon aU estates of over twenty- 
five hundred dollars the new bill laid a property tax, 



12 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

varying from .15 per cent to 1.75 per cent, a measure 
which was accepted without heartburnings by all, from 
the peasant landholder up to the ruling dynasties, which 
had heretofore enjoyed immunity from taxation. Peas- 
ant and prince, merchant and manufacturer, heavy-laden 
with taxation as they already were, looked upon this new 
contribution as additional insurance, protecting the 
Fatherland against pressing dangers, among which the 
French mortgage had come to be regarded as ever present 
and irremovable. 

This tremendous addition to her eastern neighbor's 
war power had an immediate echo across the Vosges. 
The difference in population had become too enormous 
for France to hope to meet Germany's armament by put- 
ting additional recruits into the field. French states- 
men already viewed the military disproportion with 
grave misgivings and were taking measures to restore 
the balance as best they could, when the introduction 
into the Reichstag in April, 191 3, of the Defense Bill 
above referred to forced them to immediate action. The 
result of their deliberations was a bill providing for three 
years' service instead of two, which after various amend- 
ments finally passed the French Senate on August 7, 
1 91 3. It was estimated that this new sacrifice of French 
youth would add 1 70,000 to the peace footing of the army. 
What the final results would accomplish towards restor- 
ing the balance could not be exactly foretold, but it was 
confidently hoped that through this additional sacrifice 
the French people would, to a considerable degree, com- 
pensate for the difference in population. 

The events of the second half of 1 914 made it clear that 
French statesmen had not exaggerated Germany's prep- 
aration for attack. Practically every German of mili- 
tary age who was physically sound was found in the 
crucial hour to be trained in some way for service and 
made available for mobilization, and events showed that 
every feature of organization and equipment was in as 



THE FRENCH MORTGAGE 13 

nearly perfect condition as technical education and punc- 
tilious fulfilment of duty could make it. In 1870 it was 
said that the German engineers had better maps of the 
French country next the frontier than the French general 
staff ; and in the years following the same patient method 
and careful organization marked the preparations for 
another struggle. The best ordnance and tools of war 
for which the Krupps are famous always went to the 
French frontier, where no railway embankment was 
raised nor new highway paved without careful consider- 
ation of its ultimate bearing as an item in the national 
defenses and in that swift advance which German officers 
always counted upon in the event of a war with France. 
Field-Marshall Roon, who was minister of war at the time 
of the outbreak of the war of 1870, often declared that the 
two weeks following the memorable night on which the 
order for mobihzation was given were the idlest and most 
care-free of his life. So completely had all details gov- 
erning the movement been worked out that the War 
Office did not have to reply to one inquiry during this 
time on the part of the commanders in charge of opera- 
tions. This was the model which German strategists 
held up before themselves during the succeeding four 
decades. How to mobilize half a million men in forty- 
eight hours, and without stripping the fortresses on the 
Russian frontier, hurl a powerful force across the French 
line between Verdun and Toul, isolating these tremen- 
dous fortresses in preparation for the sweep on Paris 
through Belgium, — this was the task which the general 
staff had always before it as its first and most important 
theoretical problem. 

How well the problem was solved was fully shown by 
the events of August, 191 4. The force which, in thirty 
days after the notices of mobilization were posted, rolled 
almost within gunshot of the Paris forts, was a model 
war machine in mobility and striking power. It was that 
in great measure because its individual units were the 



14 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

product of the military schoolmastering which begins 
when the German lad of six or seven enters the Volks- 
schule. It would be a bold historian who would give to 
any modern European nation the palm for courage, — so 
much the more are discipline and technical training 
necessary for efl&ciency. In the conflict between France 
and Germany, however brilliant the achievements of 
French officers, however glorious the courage and in- 
domitable the tenacity of French soldiers, it could not be 
left out of consideration that the percentage of illiteracy 
for French recruits is 3.3, while in Germany, the classic 
land of the Volksschule, it is two-tenths of one per cent,^ 
there being practically no ilhterates in the Fatherland 
except recent Slavic and Italian immigrants. Again, as 
compared with the feudal soHdity of the German mili- 
tary system, the French have had to contend with all of 
those difficulties of administration which seem inseparable 
from a republican form of government. While no one 
doubts the individual efficiency of French war ministers, 
it must be recalled that practically every crisis in Franco- 
German affairs in the forty years down to 191 1 found the 
French army from one cause or another unprepared for a 
conffict. The most striking instance of this was in 1894, 
as brought out in the testimony of General Mercier, the 
Minister of War, before the second Dreyfus court-martial 
at Rennes five years later. In this crisis, when the 
Kaiser's court believed its honor offended and the Ger- 
man sabre was rattling loudly, Mercier was obliged to 
inform the anxious cabinet in Paris that the French army 
was so imperfectly equipped for the conflict that any 
humiliations would have to be endured. Nor is it 
easy for even the tried patriotism of French officers to 
obliterate the memory of the many scandals which have 
clouded the military history of the third republic. To 
all of this the Germans opposed a discipline, semi-feudal 
and brutal at times, but based in the last instance on a 

^The figures cited cover the conscript-levy of 1908. 



THE FRENCH MORTGAGE 15 

feeling of personal honor and appealing to the sentiment 
of duty to the Fatherland, which pervades and ennobles 
the entire German military system. 

After the fall of Bismarck in 1890 a change for the better 
came over Franco-German relations. The foreign poHcy 
of the repubhc seemed lamed for a long time to come 
through the Panama and Dreyfus scandals, and William 
II, who had forced Bismarck from the Chancellor's table, 
adopted a more conciliatory policy. The young emperor 
is said to have visited Paris as a youth and felt the charm 
of French brilliancy and dash. From being the Bellona 
of Europe the nation of gallant men and charming women 
seemed content to become the arbiter of taste and fashion. 
A continually rising stream of German visitors found its 
way to Paris and reached its height at the Exposition of 
1900, when German manufacturers, artists and scholars 
swarmed everywhere and were received with true Gallic 
grace and hospitaUty. The Franco-Russian Alliance 
seemed more than counterbalanced by the Triple Alhance, 
which had knit together the central European powers 
for twenty years. With the dimming of memories of the 
war, such incidents as the annual Sedan festival, which 
the Germans held on September 2, with its oratorical 
outbursts of Teutonic fury, grew less intense. The peace 
program of WilUam II seemed to have won the French 
heart. 

That, however, Sedan was not forgotten, on either side 
of the boundary, was soon to be apparent. The drawing 
together was only superficial, and it needed but the rub- 
bing of counter-interests in North Africa to make it plain 
that the old wound was still raw and bleeding. The 
immediate cause of the rupture of friendly relations lay 
in the fact that German diplomacy had found it almost 
impossible to keep pace with the demands which Ger- 
many's phenomenal growth made upon it. The colonial 
expansion of France, which began in 1881 under Ferry, 
met at first with something like benevolent approval in 



1 6 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

Berlin, where it was hoped that GalHc energy would 
find a new outlet in China and Africa and cease to "stare 
hypnotized at the gap in the Vosges." In the chan- 
celleries of Europe it was practically conceded that 
France, which had at last subjugated Algeria and since 
1881 exercised a close protectorate over Tunis, would 
sooner or later bring the restless tribesmen of Morocco 
under its sway. England might, it was supposed, re- 
sist an effort to endanger its route to India or its position 
in the Mediterranean, and Spain would, when the time 
came, enforce its claims, but it was not considered that 
Germany had any claims whatever. With the end of 
the century, however, the problem of finding an outlet 
for German emigration and expansion in a temperate 
climate had begun to be acute. German merchants and 
capital had penetrated Morocco, on a much smaller 
scale, it is true, than English and French, but made 
up in aggressiveness what was lacking in quantity. At 
home loud voices, not merely those of Pan- German agi- 
tators, began to demand that the rich sultanate should 
not be disposed of without consulting Germany. When 
in 1904, as a result of an agreement between France and 
England, the former received a free hand in Morocco in 
return for the resignation of all claims in Egypt, German 
pride was cut at the coolness with which the richest part 
of the barbarian world still "unprotected," right at the 
gates of Europe, was given away without even a "by 
your leave" to the greatest military power on the Con- 
tinent. 

The events of the Morocco crisis, involving at first 
chiefly France and Germany, soon drew in all of the Euro- 
pean powers. They are briefly recalled here because they 
throw a strong light on Franco- German relations three 
years before the final rupture and no less on the some- 
what uncertain and erratic nature of German diplomatic 
methods in the decade preceding the outbreak of war. 
On March 31, 1905, Emperor William made an unex- 



THE FRENCH MORTGAGE 17 

pected and spectacular appearance in the harbor of Tan- 
gier, where he assured German residents of the protection 
of the Fatherland. Immediately afterwards the Berlin 
government declared itself unwilling to accept the Anglo- 
French agreement, and demanded a conference of the 
powers to settle the status of the sultanate, following 
up its demand with a persistence which was explainable, 
but which was unfortunately accompanied by violent 
talk from the jingo press, only too reminiscent of the 
"sabre-rattling" policy that Bismarck occasionally used 
with such skill against France. Delcasse, France's 
adroit foreign minister, who had negotiated the arrange- 
ment with England and warmed it into an entente, de- 
clared that the Germans were bluffing, but once more 
France was in the midst of changes of armament which 
rendered her unprepared for war, and the lawyers and 
business men of the Chamber of Deputies sacrificed 
Delcasse and accepted the conference. From the con- 
ference of Algeciras German diplomats emerged greatly 
disappointed. Its net result was a much closer alignment 
of England with the Franco-Russian alKance and a weak- 
ening of Italy in its support of Germany that shook public 
confidence in the Triple Alliance. Only Austria stood 
fast by her old ally. The integrity of Morocco was 
mildly endorsed, France and Spain receiving special 
privileges in the matter of policing. 

It waS'K:lear that Germany could not recede from her 
position without some compensation, and the affair 
remained a source of irritation. This showed itself at 
Casablanca in northern Morocco in September 1908, 
over a matter which had on other occasions led to bitter 
feeling in Germany, the arrest of German deserters from 
the French Foreign Legion. In February of the follow- 
ing year an arrangement was concluded between Ger- 
many and France which while guaranteeing the integrity 
of Morocco and insuring for Germany an absolutely 
open door for trade, conceded to France predominating 



1 8 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

political influence in the sultanate. An honest effort 
had been made to settle the matter in this agreement, but 
diplomacy could not foresee the future, and another crisis 
came very speedily. The recurrence of internal troubles 
in Morocco led to the French march on Fez in May and 
June 1 91 1, and it soon became clear that the absolute 
dependence of the Sultan on French arms to maintain 
any order whatever among the unruly tribesmen would 
lead to a long, if not a permanent, occupation. German 
journals ran the whole gamut from mild protest to bitter 
arraignment of Galhc lack of faith; the Paris press 
breathed a half -restrained defiance. When on July 2, 
1 91 1, the German cruiser Panther dropped anchor in the 
splendid but little known harbor of Agadir, the crisis 
reached an acute stage. 

The negotiations which filled the summer and fall of 
191 1 were embittered by the entry of Great Britain into 
the controversy. As usual when Franco-German re- 
lations were agitated, the conversations of the diplomats, 
Jules Cambon and Kiderlen-Wachter, were accompanied 
by a chorus of misstatements and braggadocio in the 
journals of Paris and Berlin. The sad part of it was that 
in this affair, which brought three great nations, stand- 
ing at the apex of culture, to the brink of war, the ques- 
tion of the rights of the Mohammedan inhabitants of 
Morocco was never raised at all. All parties were merely 
fired by a selfish desire for national profit. The whole 
Morocco affair being without any ethical basis whatever, 
simply resolved itself into a matter of bargain, the out- 
break of the latent hatred of England among popular 
circles in Germany furnishing the only element of na- 
tional enthusiasm. Whatever the mistakes of German 
diplomacy, the impartial observer cannot deny that 
German prestige would have suffered greatly if France 
had been permitted without protest to extend her power 
over Morocco. Nor can any one doubt that this is just 
what she had determined to do, exactly as she herself 



THE FRENCH MORTGAGE 19 

had done thirty years before in Tunis, as England had 
done in Egypt, and as Italy was even then preparing to 
do in TripoH. In spite of popular excitement, diplomacy 
triumphed, and the treaty of November 4, 191 1, put 
Morocco, excepting such portions as should fall to Spain, 
forever under the control of France, awarding Germany 
more than 100,000 square miles of the French Congo as 
compensation. The bitter dissatisfaction of both sides 
would seem to indicate that so far as Germany and 
France were concerned, the bargain was a fair one, 
although the investigation of the German Colonial Ofi&ce 
in 191 2 disclosed that the acquired region. New Kamerun, 
while probably rich in lumber and rubber, was so com- 
pletely a prey to the sleeping sickness and other Central 
African torments that its exploitation would be exceed- 
ingly difl&cult. As an element of international misunder- 
standing Morocco was out of the way ; as a symptom of 
Franco- German feeHng the entire Morocco affair showed 
how little progress had been made toward a mutual 
understanding and what a gulf of mistrust still separated 
these two leaders of modern civilization. 

Morocco, however, had been removed as a source of 
irritation and that was felt as a gain on both sides. Un- 
der clearing skies it seemed that France and Germany 
might enter upon one of those periods like that in the 
nineties of the last century, when their relations, although 
not exactly friendly, were nevertheless upon a workable 
basis. Many Frenchmen and many Germans hoped 
so ; and in spite of the train of forces set in motion by 
Italy's attack on Turkey's North African possessions in 
191 1, hopefulness continued. At the London Confer- 
ence in 1 91 3, which settled the Balkan chaos, French and 
German diplomats discovered no points of irritation; 
indeed, while Germany sought to render Austria's de- 
mands for an independent Albania less peremptory, 
France tried to restrain her ally Russia from uncondi- 
tional support of Serbia's demands for an opening to 



20 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

the Adriatic. But after the Balkan crisis seemed to have 
passed, the deep distrust still remained. The German 
Defense Bill of 191 3 and the French Three Years Service 
Law were greeted with bitter criticism by the press on 
the opposite sides of the Vosges. Each nation regarded 
itself as the direct object of the other's armament, and it 
was evident that the correct and even conciliatory atti- 
tude of ministries and diplomats would give way to a 
dangerous tension the moment any object of dispute 
arose. It was evident too that the tone of public opinion 
on neither side had changed, and that the alliances by 
which both nations had sought to strengthen themselves 
in eastern Europe would draw both into the vortex the 
moment the unstable equilibrium of the Balkans should 
end in a crash. 

"In the end we must pay for the windows which our 
journalists break. ' ' This oft-quoted remark of Bismarck's 
has applied peculiarly to Germany's relations to France. 
The causes of the violence and irresponsibility of a cer- 
tain section of the German chauvinistic press will be 
taken up in a later chapter ; here it is merely to be noted 
that this irresponsibility and violence bore especially 
evil fruit in Franco-German relations. The French 
press has its own peculiar sins to answer for and they 
are not light ones either, as will be shown in the chapter 
on Alsace-Lorraine. But something may be said in 
excuse of the humiliated antagonist, smarting with a 
sense of powerlessness which had grown constantly 
more acute through the passing years. Certainly much 
may also be said in justification of German distrust of 
French intentions and watchfulness lest an unfavorable 
international conjuncture might find the empire sur- 
prised by an effort to win back Alsace and Lorraine, 
which the German sincerely believed to be his by every 
law human and divine. It has long been evident that any 
better understanding between Germany and France 
must rest not on the approaches of rulers and puppet 



THE FRENCH MORTGAGE 21 

statesmen, but on something like a revolution in the 
thought of the people themselves, and in such a revo- 
lution the pubhc press, the nation's schoolmaster in po- 
litical affairs, must play an important part. For this 
reason it is regrettable that the German press beginning 
with the early nineties assumed an attitude of con- 
tempt toward the repubhc that not only fanned into 
flame a keen feeling of resentment west of the Vosges 
but also grievously misled the Germans as to the nature 
and tendencies of their western neighbors. The papers 
which in the seventies sounded the long roll at every 
sign of France's regeneration began later to picture the 
republic as a decrepit antagonist which the empire 
could crush into humiliation at any convenient time. 
The shadow sides of Parisian life, the "depopulation 
problem" in France, the aU-too-frequent scandals in 
French pubUc and private Hfe, the sordid phases of 
French literature and art, — all were exploited in certain 
journals of Berlin and the lesser capitals, presenting in 
their composite to the German reader the picture of 
France as a degenerate nation. The effect of all this 
on the national attitude must not be underestimated. 
It bred among the rank and file of the German middle 
and lower classes the feeling that France was wormeaten 
and ripe for destruction before the healthy battaUons 
of the Fatherland. That these ideas were not shared 
by well-informed Germans, is a matter of course ; 
still less was the general staff in Berlin ignorant that 
even with Germany's tremendous accession of strength, 
France's powers of resistance were many times greater 
than in 1870. It is a fact though that there gradually 
took possession even of cultured circles a conviction of 
French weakness and degeneracy and that feelings of 
this kind have an important influence on the creation of 
just such waves of war sentiment as ran through western 
Germany in the summer of 191 1. "In two weeks we 
shall be in Paris," was commonly heard in hotels and on 



22 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

railroad trains in the Rhine and Moselle country, and 
after the formation of the Triple Entente, metropolitan 
and provincial papers frequently assured their readers 
that France would have to pay for all of the windows 
that England might break. 
/ If the idea of an easy conquest of France, so long 

f disseminated by a certain section of the German press, 
facilitated the creation of a war spirit to the east of the 
Vosges, it is not surprising also that the extravagant 
programs set forth by Pan-Germanists produced a feel- 
ing of extreme nervousness in France. At such times as 
the Morocco crises one might read even in journals of 
standing that the annexation of Champagne or Franche 
Comte was one of the aims of German expansion, or hear 
that high financiers had demanded of the government 
the acquisition of maritime rights in Brest or some 
southern French port as unconditionally necessary for 
the development of Germany. Such things were in' 
their turn taken up and dihgently exploited and bitterly 
glossarized by the more hectic Paris journals. The 

/ vigorous tone of German diplomacy, which retained the 
dictatorial ring of Bismarck's day, made even just con- 
cessions difficult for French statesmen. Thus while 
Germans felt that France waited only for a favorable 
international conjuncture to undertake the recovery of 
the lost provinces, there grew up among Frenchmen the 
feehng that Germany was determined sooner or later to 
bring French honor to bay and that further concessions 
and humiliations might delay but could not avert a 
conflict. 

In the history of the past century there is no sadder 
or more discouraging spectacle for the student of civiliza- 
tion than that offered by France and Germany. The 
conflicts between the Germanic and the Romance world, 
which have flowed unceasingly back and forth across 
the Vosges and up and down the Moselle and the Meuse, 
left an inheritance of hate and distrust which all of the 



/ 



THE FRENCH MORTGAGE 23 

progress of civilization has only intensified and em- 
bittered ; and one must search history carefully indeed 
to find in modern times an instance where two nations 
standing at the forefront in the arts of peace have faced 
each other for so long a period ready for instant war. 
Increasingly for more than forty years Metz, Verdun, 
Strasburg, Toul and Belfort bristled with war material. 
Feverishly year after year the French engineers planned 
and replanned defences for the great highway that leads 
past Mars la Tour into the heart of Lorraine. The tour- 
ist who descended into the death gorge of Gravelotte or 
wandered over the hills to St. Privat or Vionville, where 
since 1870 thousands of Germans and Frenchmen Ue 
buried under the wheatfields, was always under the 
glasses of the sentries at Point du Jour and the other 
forts crowning the wooded heights around Metz. The 
political crises which have been recalled above, 1887, 
1905 and 191 1, were reflected by an access of watchful- 
ness on the border. A panic of spies filled the air, dis- 
trust and fear were apparent to the most unobserving 
traveller. Nominally the two nations were at peace, 
but actually the conditions were almost those of war. 
To those who know the peace-loving nature of the in- 
dividual Frenchman or German such a situation seems 
monstrous. Its existence could only be explained by 
the feeling of distrust which had become chronic in 
Franco-German affairs, a distrust founded on centuries 
of French interference and aggression and refounded 
upon a great humihation imposed upon France and 
forty succeeding years of humiliation. 

Despite political rivalry and popular distrust there 
have been features in the relations between Germany 
and France which gave and still give hope and encourage- 
ment. Intercourse in trade and business constantly 
growing brought a growing recognition on both sides 
of the supplementary qualities which each possesses in 
the field of business undertaking. German method and 



24 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

thoroughness have taught much to French scientific 
men in recent decades, and the publication of works 
like those of Henri Lichtenberger testifies to an interest 
in German thought such as was unknown in France be- 
fore the end of the last century. Political rivalry, Hke 
war, speeds the interchange of cultural influences, and in 
the forty-odd years between peace and war Germany, 
which through the centuries had always been the borrower, 
began to repay to France a part of the intellectual debt 
of former times. Indeed, the conquest by German phi- 
losophy, science and music was so complete that it may 
be said of the average cultured Frenchman of the twen- 
tieth century, — something that was certainly never 
true of any generation of his ancestors, — that he is 
more at home in the intellectual world of Germany and 
more capable of appreciating German character than the 
German is of entering into the peculiar soul-world of the 
French. 

On the other hand, there has never been a time when 
Gallic dash and energy were more admired in Germany, 
even in the days of Frederick the Great, when every 
German princehng aped the vices of Versailles and every 
shopkeeper on the Rhine greeted his neighbor with Bon 
jour! Massenet and Debussy won their way slowly 
in spite of German musical aloofness, and the inroads 
of French art on the German market caused in 191 1 
the formation of a defensive league. The rivalry with 
England had at last begun to undermine the old feeling 
of hostility to France; convinced of French weakness, 
the Germans gave rein again to their natural admiration 
for French brilliancy and taste. In 191 1 and 191 2 and 
1913, writers Hke Maximilian Harden of the Berlin 
Zukunft, who felt that in permitting the formation of the 
Triple Entente German diplomats had allowed Bis- 
marck's worst nightmare to become a reality, began to 
call loudly for an attempt to win the friendship of the 
nation to which German culture owes so much. Un- 



THE FRENCH MORTGAGE 25 

fortunately the bonds of culture do not guarantee peace ; 
but even in the present stage of human infirmity they 
can do something to create conditions favorable to it. 
French and German scholars have met in ever increasing 
numbers at learned congresses; French and German 
sportsmen, who learned to know each other's quahties 
on many fields, could not part save with feelings of 
mutual admiration. The exchange of teachers between 
the French and Prussian ministries of education, carried 
on with much more enthusiasm on the German side, it 
is true, did its part to cultivate a better knowledge of the 
neighbor. These influences, although interrupted by 
war, will in the end do much to weave forgetfulness over 
the bitter, bloody work of the past and present and to 
lay the foundation for the mutual understanding which 
is the hope of the future. 



CHAPTER II 

Allies and Enemies to the East 

"The question at issue is decided, now it is our duty 
to bring back the old friendship with Austria." This 
far-seeing remark of Bismarck's immediately after the 
Prussian legions had overwhelmed the Austrian forces 
at Sadowa in 1866 gave the keynote to his poHcy toward 
Prussia's eastern neighbor and ancient rival. This 
poHcy he carried through only after a bitter struggle 
with Crown Prince Frederick and the victorious generals 
who had humbled the Habsburg eagles. It was a clear 
vision of the life-necessity for a good understanding 
between the two great powers of central Europe that 
made the Chancellor offer almost the same terms when 
on a victorious march on Vienna, as had been contained 
in the Prussian ultimatum at the beginning of the war, 
and the desire to pave the way for a peace without 
heartburnings on Austria's side made him deny to the 
impatient war lords the satisfaction of leading their 
legions in triumph through the Danube capital. Prus- 
sian generosity was rewarded by Austria's neutrality at 
the outbreak of the war with France, a neutrality which 
was persistently upheld by the Emperor Francis Joseph 
and the Hungarian statesmen in spite of all the efforts 
of the Austrian foreign minister Beust, who had worked 
for years to girdle Prussia about with a league between 
Austria, Italy and France. 

In spite of Prussia's generosity and the friendship 
between the Habsburg and Hohenzollern dynasties, the 
league which binds polyglot Austria with Germany 

26 



ALLIES AND ENEMIES TO THE EAST 27 

would never have sustained the wear of a generation 
were it not riveted by a constant common danger, the 
danger of a union of Slavic interests under the leader- 
ship of Russia. The fear of such a union looms now 
large now small on the horizon of eastern Europe; and 
while keeping strong the bond which unites the Germans 
of Austria to their brother Germans of the west, it has 
also since the end of the seventies cemented the old 
vmion between the Magyars of Hungary and the German 
race into an alliance which bids fair to outlast the wear 
of generations. 

Friendship with Russia had been for more than a 
century a tradition of the Prussian royal family, and 
Bismarck found it easy in 1872 to bring about an under- 
standing between the three monarchs of autocratic 
tendencies, — the Czar Alexander II and the two emper- 
ors, Francis Joseph and WiUiam I. Undoubtedly this 
"Three Emperors' Agreement" rested upon a soHd basis, 
a common sympathy with autocratic institutions and a 
strong family friendship; but in 1872 the days of the 
Holy Alliance were irrevocably past, and in the last 
quarter of the nineteenth century foreign poKcies, even 
in Russia, could no longer be determined by personal 
considerations, when these colHded with such a racial 
impulse as that which draws North Slavs and South 
Slavs together. 

The first wedge which was to separate Russia and 
Germany was driven in 1875. In that year, as has been 
shown above (page 6), the influence of adroit French 
diplomacy on a vain despot brought about the inter- 
vention of the Czar with Emperor WilHam in favor of 
France. The real cleavage came, however, in the fol- 
lowing year, when Russia was arming for her advance 
on the Dardanelles under the pretext of a holy crusade 
to emancipate the South Slavic peoples from the Turk, 
and, as before, found Austria-Hungary in her path. In 
answer to the questions of the Russian foreign ministry, 



28 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

Bismarck was finally obliged to declare, after long 
fidgeting and evasion, that in the event of a war between 
Austria and Russia, Germany would refuse to sit idly 
by and see her ancient friend, the Danube monarchy, 
bled to exhaustion. At the Congress of Berlin in 1878, 
which marked the high tide of Germany's prestige as a 
neutral power, the necessity arose of choosing clearly and 
definitely one of the eastern neighbors as an ally. At 
this Congress Russia saw herself and her Slavic con- 
federates stripped one by one of the fruits of Slavic 
victory, while Austria-Hungary received as a reward 
for a war in which she had remained neutral the right 
to occupy Bosnia and Herzegovina, finally winning 
these two splendid Balkan provinces, with their 97 per 
cent of Slavic population, with a sacrifice of scarcely five 
thousand officers and men. After this it was impossible 
for Bismarck to teeter longer between the two rivals 
in the Balkans, and he chose as ally the partly blood- 
related Austria-Hungary, all of whose interests de- 
manded peace and the maintenance of the status quo in, 
the southeast. The alliance concluded in 1879 between 
Bismarck and the far-sighted Hungarian statesman An- 
drassy, foreign minister of the Dual Monarchy, was a 
defensive league against the great Slavic state and a 
wall against the Slavic advance from the Baltic to the 
Bosphorus. 

While the fear of Russian aggressions drove Germany 
and Austria-Hungary into an alliance for mutual in- 
dependence and defense, it was the attitude of France 
that finally brought Italy to their side and gave rise 
to the Triple Alliance. United Germany and united 
Italy had, in a measure, undergone their baptism of fire 
together. It is true that after the French and Italian 
forces had defeated Austria at Solferino in 1859 and the 
whole of Venetia lay open before the liberators, Prussian 
diplomacy stayed the hand of Napoleon III and delayed 
for seven years the redemption of all of northern Italy 



ALLIES AND ENEMIES TO THE EAST 29 

from the Austrian yoke. But when emancipation finally 
came, it came through Prussian help. As early as 1862 
Bismarck sounded the court at Turin as to what its 
attitude would be toward a joint war against Austria, 
and even less astute statesmen than Cavour foresaw 
that henceforth Itahan and Prussian development must 
go hand in hand. Thus it came about that Prussia and 
Italy had their common reckoning with the Habsburg 
in 1866. Italy might indeed have been spared this war, 
had Victor Emmanuel II been willing to accept Venetia 
from the intermediary hand of France and break his 
plighted word to Prussia. The gallant king refused, and 
his refusal set the seal on German and ItaHan friendship 
for a generation. 

But something more than the common interest with 
Prussia was necessary to bring Italy into an alliance 
which included the ancestral enemy Austria. That 
something was, as we have seen, the fear of France. 
Like Germany, Italy began her united national exist- 
ence with a French mortgage. From Charlemagne to 
Napoleon III the interference of France had been a con- 
stant obstacle to the union of the Italian states and the 
development of Italian interests. Even after the in- 
vasion of France by German troops in 1870 had recalled 
every available French soldier to defend his native land 
and had forced Napoleon to leave the Pope to his fate, 
opening the Porta Pia to the infantry of Savoy, a French 
warship remained in the harbor of Civita Vecchia ready 
to rescue the Pope, remained there indeed till 1874, when 
the final triumph of the bourgeoisie over the royalist and 
clerical parties in Paris at last relieved the young kingdom 
of Italy of the nightmare of a war with France. 

The French gunboat sailed away, but left in Italy 
bitter memories of generations of French interference in 
her affairs. The hatred which these engendered was 
kindled afresh when the Italian national spirit found 
itself checked by France in its expansion in the Mediter- 



30 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

ranean. In 1881 France spread a protectorate over 
another choice morsel of the disintegrating Ottoman 
empire, Tunis, where there were and normally are twenty 
Italian residents to one Frenchman ; and Italy realized 
that only through an alliance with the great mihtary 
powers of central Europe could she get a backing which 
would protect her from being further outflanked. The 
next year Victor Emmanuel visited Berlin, where he 
met an enthusiastic reception from court and populace, 
and very soon thereafter the conclusion of the Triple 
Alliance was announced. Italy entered it without en- 
thusiasm, but with a very clear realization of the benefits 
which it would bring to her. 

The Triple Alliance which thus came into being was 
signed originally in May 1882 for a period of five years. 
It was renewed in 1887 for a like period; and then in 
1891, 1902 and 1913, the last time for five years. The 
league between Germany and Austria had bound each 
of these powers to come to the aid of the other in case 
of an attack by Russia. The purpose of the Triple 
Alliance was more purely defensive. The exact terms 
of the treaty were not published, but no secret was 
made of its main object. It guaranteed to the three 
powers mutual assistance in maintaining their terri- 
tories ; and it is apparent that its founders had in mind 
an insurance on Germany's security in Alsace-Lorraine, 
Austria's in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Italy's in 
Rome. With the changes of the years new guarantees 
were assumed, emphasizing, as it seemed, the defensive 
character of the alliance. Thus Italy secured in 1902 
and 1 91 3 concessions which assured to her compensation 
in case of an Austrian advance in the Balkans, although 
the Teutonic powers did not pledge themselves to pro- 
tect the peninsular state in her conquests in the eastern 
Mediterranean. Certain it is that the advocates of the 
Triple Alliance did not claim too much when they as- 
serted that no international league of modern times has 



ALLIES AND ENEMIES TO THE EAST 31 

been more productive of peace, and that from its founda- 
tion in 1882 until 19 14, when the rivalry of Teuton and 
Slav in the Balkans passed beyond restraint, this union 
between the Germanic states of central Europe and 
Italy acted as a balance wheel in every European crisis. 

Very different was the character of the Austro-German 
agreement of 1879, which Bismarck published to all the 
world in 1888. It contained from the beginning the 
germs of war, which must come whenever the Russian 
advance threatened the prestige of either power. It was 
plain from the first that the danger clouds hung in the 
unruly Balkans, the area of Austrian and Russian rival- 
ries. Anything in the strife of nationahties in that 
troubled zone which led to the aggrandizement of the 
Slavic states must find Russia's support and in the end 
check Austria's ambitions. 

For a time the wiliness of Bismarck kept Russia 
isolated and retained the Czar's friendship. "I have 
thrown a bridge across to Vienna without breaking 
down the older one to St. Petersburg," declared the 
Iron Chancellor after the first successful approaches to 
Austria in 1872. So long as the Bismarckian tradition 
dominated German diplomacy, this continued to be true. 
The "Three Emperors' Agreement" was renewed in 1884, 
and in 1887 it gave place to an understanding between 
the German government and Czar Alexander III, by 
which each agreed to remain neutral in case of an attack 
by a third power, a form of "reinsurance" which 
Bismarck's successor, Caprivi, who was a soldier and 
not a diplomat, found to be a violation of loyalty to 
Germany's ally Austria. So strongly pro-Russian were 
the traditions of the Prussian royal house that old 
Emperor William in the last days of his life refused to 
sanction a marriage between his granddaughter and the 
abdicated Prince Alexander of Bulgaria, otherwise a 
most desirable match, for fear of hurting Russian sensi- 
bihties, and report says that the aged monarch on his 



32 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

deathbed urged his grandson, William II, to maintain 
good relations with the Czar. This deference to the 
great power to the east was based partly on a fear of the 
Russian military power, a feeling inherited from the 
days of the Seven Years' War, and partly no doubt on a 
feeling of sympathy entertained by the autocratic Ger- 
man ruler for Russian absolutism. Whatever the cause, 
it could not withstand the march of events. Bismarck 
had been clever enough to keep intact the league with 
Austria and yet prevent Russia from joining France; 
his successor, Caprivi, a stranger to the more devious 
ways of diplomacy, found the task beyond his powers, 
and in 1891 the strange combination between the auto- 
cratic Csar and the Gallic republic came into being as 
a counterpoise to the Triple Alliance. The exact terms 
of this instrument were not made public, but enough 
was known of its contents to make it certain that from 
the first it was directed against Germany. It gave 
France a support which she needed against Germany's 
elbows, and in this way contributed for two decades to 
European peace. Not however to the peace of Asia. 
The Dual Alliance gave Russia access to the well-filled 
savings banks of France, and from these the Czar's gov- 
ernment drew the sinews for the aggressive advance in 
the Far East which was finally hurled back by Japanese 
bayonets at Port Arthur and Mukden. 

The formation of the Franco-Russian alliance did not 
at first bring any clouds over German and Russian rela- 
tions. Prussia is the only state in Germany which 
marches with the territories of the Czar, and the in- 
fluential landed nobility of Prussia still continued to 
find the institutions of Russia according to their own 
feudal tastes. Under these reactionary influences the 
Prussian government often stooped to do police duty 
for the ministers of Russian tyranny. Before the revolu- 
tion of 1905 Russian consuls in the German university 
towns maintained a spy system in order to follow up 



ALLIES AND ENEMIES TO THE EAST 33 

revolutionary suspects among the Russian students, and 
in certain Prussian and Saxon cities they received wilUng 
aid from the police authorities, who exercised readily 
their power of expulsion. For instance, at Russian 
social gatherings in Leipsic in 1900 and 1901 Russian 
student friends pointed out such spies to me, with the 
assurance that a word to the police from one of these 
agents was all that was necessary in order to have the 
suspected disciple of science transported immediately 
beyond the frontiers of Saxony. During and after the 
revolution, when the closing of the Russian universities 
brought increased numbers of Slavic students, many of 
Jewish faith and many with very slender purses, Prus- 
sian ministers of education showed by their treatment of 
these orphaned children of the muses that the spirit of 
the Holy AUiance was not entirely dead in Prussia. 

While Prussian officialdom showed its sympathy with 
the Czar's government in its ruthless methods towards 
revolution, in the decade following the war with Japan 
a very general change took place in the attitude of the 
German press and people toward Russia. Whereas 
until the early years of the twentieth century the Hohen- 
zoUern-Bismarck tradition was still so strong that every 
German lad seemed to feel instinctively the necessity for 
keeping on good terms with the powerful neighbor to the 
east, after 1905 a tone of barely disguised contempt crept 
more and more into press and public speech. The 
colossus, whose feet of clay the sturdy Japanese had ex- 
posed, no longer inspired dread; and the agitations of 
this mightiest Slavic people, whose political life was just 
passing through its birth throes, were watched across 
the Niemen and Vistula with something very like mis- 
chievous joy. 

In a balance so nicely adjusted as that between the 
European powers, Russia's weakness at once tipped 
down the Teutonic-Magyar arm of the scale. The 
benefits of this change were reaped almost entirely by 



34 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

Austria ; Germany garnered nothing but Muscovite 
hatred, sincere, though for the time impotent. When 
the Triple Alliance was formed, Austro-Hungarian states- 
men under the leadership of the far-sighted Andrassy 
acknowledged definitely and finally Prussia's claim to 
hegemony in the Germanic world and just as definitely 
and finally resigned the ancient Habsburg claim to rule 
in the Italian peninsula. This did not mean, however, 
that the aggressive Habsburg dynasty gave up the 
family tradition of aggrandizement and conquest, but 
that the Dual Monarchy was from now on to turn its 
ambitions toward the Balkans, where small and weak 
states and the decaying Turkish empire offered less 
resistance to the advance of Austrian influence. Here 
the backing of the first military power of Europe armed 
Austrian diplomacy with a force that made itself felt 
more and more from the Adriatic to the Black Sea and 
enabled Teuton and Magyar for a generation to hold in 
check the minor Slavic states and their great Slavic 
protector, Russia. In 1878 Bosnia and Herzegovina 
fell under Austrian protection, as we have seen, almost 
without a blow, as Austria's spoil from the Slavic attack 
on Turkey. In the decades that followed the Dual 
Monarchy proceeded with the organization of these two 
provinces into model states, drilling and schooling the 
population, which is almost entirely Serb, under Teutonic 
and Magyar sergeants and schoolmasters. In 1908 
Francis Joseph's government seized the conjunction of 
Russia's weakness and the revolution in Turkey and 
declared these two Balkan states annexed forever to 
Austria-Hungary. Slavic pride was stung to the quick 
by this action : Serbia mobilized and Russia began to 
do so ; but the Berlin government stood firmly by Ger- 
many's ally. It was then that Kaiser William "showed 
himself in glittering armor," to quote a popular expres- 
sion in the Berlin papers at the time, and certified 
Austria's title to the annexed provinces with the poten- 



ALLIES AND ENEMIES TO THE EAST 35 

tial weight of Germany's army corps. The Russian 
general staff undoubtedly felt that a war with the Ger- 
man-Austrian combination could have but one ending, 
and the Czar demobilized and, to complete his humilia- 
tion, the government at St. Petersburg was obliged to 
yield to a suggestion from Vienna via Berlin and call 
off Serbia. The Dual Monarchy pocketed the two 
provinces and defied any general conference of the 
powers to question her title. Furthermore, Austrian 
influence was slowly making its way among the Christian 
Albanians across the Turkish frontier through the es- 
tablishment of ecclesiastical schools and other institu- 
tions ; the statesmen of Vienna and Budapest were 
drawing ever tighter the ring around Serbia and were 
easily able to hold in check the efforts of the poet-warrior 
Nicholas, king of tiny Montenegro. 

Bismarck once declared that the whole Balkan ques- 
tion was not worth the bones of a single Pomeranian 
grenadier. To him the Austro-German alliance was an 
insurance against Russian aggression and a guarantee 
of the maintenance of the status quo in eastern Europe. 
Irresistibly, however, the centre of gravity had moved 
from Berlin to Vienna, and every readjustment in the 
Balkans brought Germany in the train of Austria more 
and more squarely in the path of Russian advance. 
Backed by Germany the Dual Monarchy had won the 
two richest provinces in the Balkan peninsula, and 
through the same backing had maintained the status 
quo in European Turkey and' prevented Russia from 
reaping any advantage from the Turkish revolution of 
1908. When a divergence showed itself between 
Austria's and Italy's plans in the Balkans, German 
sympathy and diplomacy placed itself unhesitatingly 
upon the side of the Teutonic ally and assisted in beating 
off any combination of Italian and Russian interests 
which might block the path of the Dual Monarchy tow- 
ard the southeast. Thus in 1906 the Vienna ministry, 



36 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

aided by Berlin, was able to checkmate Russo-Italian 
plans for a Transbalkan Railway, which should connect 
the Adriatic with the Danube, by preparing to carry out 
a counter plan to drive a railroad through the Sanjak 
of Novibazar, thus connecting Austria-Hungary's Balkan 
provinces and Vienna itself with Saloniki, the great 
gateway of trade on the JEgesin and the Mecca of Habs- 
burg hopes in the southeast. 

When in 191 2, through the formation of the league of 
Balkan states, the Dual Monarchy was shut ofif from 
further advance, Germany stood faithfully by her ally. 
With her backing, Austria faced down Russian dissatis- 
faction and blocked Serbia's way to the Adriatic by 
carving out the kingdom of Albania, for which Germany 
furnished one of her mediatized princes, William of 
Wied, as ruler. Once more the Teutonic-Magyar com- 
bination had checked the Slavic advance, and although 
the expansion of Greece and Serbia seemed to have put 
an end to Austria's hopes of a port on the JEgean, the 
Austrian and German diplomats rose from the London 
Conference of 1913 without disappointment. Once 
more they had checked the Slav in his march to blue 
water. Once more the big brother Russia saw his little 
brothers Serbia and Montenegro shorn of the most 
coveted fruits of victory, and when the break-up of the 
Balkan League and the second Balkan War followed 
in the summer of 1913, it seemed as if Austrian intrigue 
and the weight of Germany's legions had forced back 
the Slavic wave for another decade. 

In the meantime the Berlin government was not 
ignorant that the dragons' teeth which it had sowed 
in Russia in 1908 and again in 191 2-13 had sprung up 
into the bitterest hatred. It had long been acutely 
sensitive to the dangers which lurked in the unruly 
Balkans, and for this reason the formation of the Balkan 
League, and the staggering blows which it gave Turkey, 
caused a shock in Berlin scarcely less unpleasant than 



ALLIES AND ENEMIES TO THE EAST 37 

in Vienna. The fact that Austria had now to face a 
strong alliance instead of several weak states moved the 
German general staff to quick measures, and the Defense 
Bill above referred to (page nff.)) which passed the 
Reichstag in July 1913, was Germany's anchor to the 
windward. Before its passage, however, the results of 
the London Conference and the events in the Balkans 
had relieved the pressure. In the meantime Russian 
journals and publicists took on an increasingly bitter 
tone toward Germany, and the reorganization of the 
Russian army after the Japanese War seemed complete, 
while it was well known that the Czar's government 
was busy with the construction of strategic railways 
in the western borderlands. Nevertheless all surfaces of 
irritation seemed removed for the present and the watch 
on the Vistula went on without any feeling that an im- 
mediate settlement of the age-old rivalry between Teuton 
and Slav was impending. That it came little more 
than a year after the adjournment of the London Con- 
ference was due directly to the wide differences in the 
whole field of culture and civilization which separate 
Austria from her southeastern neighbors, differences 
which together with racial and religious antagonisms 
have made the Balkans the danger zone of Europe. 
Here, where for generations every European crisis has 
acted as an irritant, was now set off in the summer of 
1914 an explosion which turned Bismarck's great league 
for the preservation of peace into one for the dissemina- 
tion of war. In the fanatical patriotism of the Serbians 
lay the spark which was to end Germany's forty-three 
years of peace. 

It was not merely in foreign affairs that Germany's 
support brought for so many years security to Austria- 
Hungary. It likewise gave the Dual Monarchy peace 
and the opportunity of development within its borders. 
In this patchwork of races the Slavic peoples form 45 
per cent of the total population, and the history of latter- 



38 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

day Austria has been a continuous struggle to balance 
off over against each other the distracting demands of 
Czechs, Moravians, Poles, Slovaks, Croats, Serbs, Ru- 
thenians and Slovenes. Facing these the Germanic 
inhabitants make up only 24 per cent of Austria-Hungary 
or 35 per cent of Austria. Backed by the alliance with 
their blood-relatives to the west, the Austrian Germans 
have maintained the leadership in this ethnic crazy- 
quilt, and the government at Vienna has found itself 
free to treat its Slavic subjects with energy and de- 
termination, without the fear of a greater Slavic alliance 
under the leadership of Russia. 

Under these circumstances the Danube state went for- 
ward to a point where universal suffrage and the conse- 
quent forcing to the front of inner social questions, such 
as compulsory workingmen's insurance and the secular- 
ization of the schools, began to break the soHdarity of 
the "national" parties, whose bitter enmities for so 
many years disgraced the sessions of the Reichsrath and 
Austrian public life generally. Some years ago it was 
quite commonly said that the death of Francis Joseph 
would bring an end to the Dual Monarchy and perhaps 
the dissolution of Austria itself ; with the grovrth of the 
new century, however, there arose a feeling of optimism. 
It seemed certain that the union of the monarchies and 
the permanence of the djmasty were guaranteed so long 
as the Teutonic Austrians and the Magyars found in 
the alliance with Germany a guarantee of protection 
from without and the possibility of inner development. 
Thus it happened that the nine and one-half million 
Germans who live in the ancestral Habsburg lands, — 
upper and lower Austria, Bohemia, Styria and Tjnrol, 
— even though cut off by the national boundary posts 
from their Bavarian, Saxon and Prussian relatives, were 
able to retain the leadership in this heterogeneous empire. 
They had lost political unity, perhaps forever, with the 
larger body of the German race, but maintained a po- 



ALLIES AND ENEMIES TO THE EAST 39 

litical attachment to their cousins in Germany which was 
able to keep the peace in Austria in spite of the aggres- 
siveness of the Bohemian Czechs and the Galician Poles 
and the Russian cousins, the Ruthenians. 

Unquestionably both without and within Austria 
took much more than she could give in the alliance with 
Germany. Nevertheless the advantages to Germany 
were significant. Through the increase of Austria's 
prestige in the Balkans Germany was guaranteed an 
open door for her trade, not merely into all of the Balkan 
states but beyond in Asia Minor and throughout the 
eastern Mediterranean. And while after Bismarck's 
day the alliance was of the greatest value to Germany 
in making her independent of Russia, it also assured her 
freedom to proceed with the aggressive nationalizing of 
her own Polish subjects without the danger of a Slavic 
league being formed against her, for it must not be for- 
gotten that Germany has on her eastern marches nearly 
three million Poles who still entertain hopes of a Greater 
Poland. 

The two strongest military powers of Europe, the one 
completely German, the other German in dynasty, 
military traditions and leadership, offered without further 
alhes a counterbalance to the whole of Slavic and Ro- 
mance Europe, and one may say that an alliance between 
them was and is really necessary for the maintenance of 
European peace. Thus in spite of all efforts to win them 
away, Austria-Hungary's representatives stood by Ger- 
many through thick and thin at the conference of Al- 
geciras (page 17), and the unbreakable front thus 
presented enabled the Kaiser's diplomats to face a ring 
of hostile powers and to retire, with disappointed hopes, 
it is true, but without humiliation. 

It is clear then that so long as loyalty is one of the 
cardinal virtues of the German soul, the Germans of the 
Empire could not desert the Austrian Germans in the 
face of an attack either within or without the Dual 



40 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

Monarchy, The march of affairs in the Balkans after 
the Young Turk revolution of 1908 brought the danger 
of such an attack constantly closer. The enthusiasm 
for a Greater Serbia, rudely checked in that year, had 
fed large upon the military successes of the two Balkan 
wars and in the five years following Austria's annexa- 
tion of Bosnia and Herzegovina had grown by leaps and 
bounds. It had long before jumped the boundaries of 
the Dual Monarchy and burrowed a hundred under- 
ground passages of revolution from Belgrade into the 
Serb provinces of Austria. In 1908 the government of 
King Peter had made a promise, underwritten by Russia, 
to abstain from all anti- Austrian propaganda. It was 
a promise which the Belgrade government could not 
and the Serbian people would not keep. Twice, in 191 2 
and 1913, the Dual Monarchy had mobilized against 
Russia and Serbia ; now the Vienna ministry saw itself 
condemned to stand always on guard against Serbian 
aggressions. There seemed no choice save between the 
continuance of a maddening condition of irritation, with 
bankrupting military crises, and a sharp and decisive 
war. The murder of the Austrian heir apparent, Francis 
Ferdinand, on June 22, 1914, by the bomb and pistol of 
two fanatics of Sarajevo, crazed with Serbian racial 
patriotism, supplied the trigger action, and Austria's 
peaceful mission in the Balkans was at an end. 

The present generation will probably never know just 
what took place between the courts of Vienna and Berlin 
in July, 1 9 14. It is idle to speculate as to whether Kaiser 
William and his advisers really believed that Russia 
could again be held in check as in 1908-09 and 191 2-13. 
The character of the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia of 
July 23, 1914, was such that it could only have come 
from those who had made up their minds to cut once for 
all the web which Russian diplomacy had spun about the 
Dual Monarchy and who knew that the help of the 
German ally could be reckoned upon. Those who have 



ALLIES AND ENEMIES TO THE EAST 41 

observed the infinite care with which all things connected 
with the national security are followed up in Germany 
cannot doubt that from long before 1908 the last eventual 
consequences of the support of Germany's ally against 
the South Slavs had been carefully weighed and all the 
risks considered. Whatever desire for peace was felt in 
Berhn did not go so far as to admit the possibility of the 
humiHation of the ally on the Danube. Whatever the 
issue of the conflict was to be, it should relieve Austria 
from the nightmare of Slavic pressure. 

While stern necessity held Germany and Austria- 
Hungary together, Italy's adherence was felt to be less 
necessary and her position was by no means so consist- 
ent. She had entered the Triple Alliance to protect 
herself from French pressure. When with the fading of 
monarchical and clerical hopes in France, this pressure 
diminished, there sprang up a strong party in the penin- 
sula which looked for sympathy and support to Paris 
rather than to Berhn and Vienna. Like the great 
minister, Crispi, not a few Itahan leaders have been 
men of repubhcan training and sympathies, to whom 
French repubhcan institutions made a direct appeal. 
Popular sentiment for the blood-related Latin nation 
beyond the Maritime Alps turned strongly on various 
occasions toward a league with the republic. England's 
friendship too had always been eagerly sought by Italian 
statesmen and people ; and British sympathy and gold 
were ever sponsors for Italy's position among the great 
powers. To many great Englishmen, indeed, Italy has 
been a second homeland, and they have followed the 
struggles of the peninsular state with something more 
than neutral feeling. English and French naval bases 
flank the Italian coast, while Germany's boundaries no- 
where touch Italy. Austria, on the other hand, having 
blocked the way to Italian unity as long as she could, 
still exerted herself to suppress every movement of ra- 
cial patriotism in the three-quarters of a milhon ItaUans 



42 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

on the northeastern border of the Adriatic and in the 
valley of the Adige. In the face of such conditions it is 
not to be wondered at that the Roman cabinet, striving 
to build up a national consciousness in the midst of 
frightful economic difficulties and bitter party strife, 
followed a policy in international affairs which was often 
vacillating and often selfish, nor can one blame Italian 
statesmen if, as the Germans declared, their position 
toward the northern allies was that of those who take 
all and give nothing in return. 

This trend of events reached highwater mark with the 
Algeciras conference. The Triple Alliance had become 
unpopular. Italy was slowly nursing plans for an attack 
on the Mohammedan world, and Italian statesmen in- 
clined strongly towards an understanding with the 
Anglo-French entente. How far this understanding 
went at Algeciras is xmcertain. Italy's opposition to 
Germany's proposals was more negative than positive; 
but Germany, facing an unsympathetic world, was ex- 
tremely sensitive, and the German press teemed with 
the bitterest attacks on Italian faithlessness. After the 
conference the opinion was general that the Triple Alli- 
ance was doomed to dissolution and that Italy was surely 
drifting towards the Triple Entente, which Anglo-French 
diplomacy had girdled around Germany. 

The settlement of the Morocco question in the fall of 
191 1, however, brought a change. ItaHan policy once 
more veered around. With a suddenness and a well- 
oiled organization that took the chancelleries of Europe 
completely by surprise, Italy seized Tripoli, with this one 
act blocking French advance toward the eastern Mediter- 
ranean, placing herself astride of England's route to 
Egypt and India and giving a shock to Turkey that sent 
its thrills into the most distant valleys of Macedonia 
and Asia Minor. The first news of this move echoed in 
every German and Austria-Hungarian newspaper in a 
cry of outraged amazement. Germany had for twenty 



ALLIES AND ENEMIES TO THE EAST 43 

years considered herself Turkey's sponsor in Europe. 
Her officers, the miHtary authority Koknar von der Goltz 
at their head, had reorganized Turkey's army; in the 
day of Abdul Hamid's rule her statesmen and journals 
had condoned the crimes of Islam's religious fanatics in 
Cilicia and of Turkish political leaders in Macedonia and 
Albania. Indeed, in those days of misrule before the 
Young Turk revolution of 1908 Germany was the only 
civilized land that seemed utterly deaf to the cry of 
distress from Armenian, Cretan and Bulgar. And now 
after such championship to see the last remaining frag- 
ment of Moslem North Africa faU to Italy brought forth 
the bitterest attacks from journals which had a few 
months before been eloquently championing Germany's 
right to acquire southern Morocco. 

It is not surprising that the Italians did not turn the 
other cheek to the smiter. From the Alps to the Maltese 
straits the old hatred of the Teuton flamed up with a 
truly Guelphic intensity. Memories of Austrian despot- 
ism in Lombardy and Venetia, slumbering lightly be- 
neath half a century of independence, sprang into life 
and inspired hundreds of pens, from Gabriel d'Annunzio's 
to that of the humblest provincial journalist, to a vitriolic 
denunciation of German lies and Austrian treachery. 

Never did the Triple Alliance prove its worth for Italy 
more than in this crisis, when the rapidly shifting scene 
showed that the danger to Italy's forward movement, in 
so far as it concerned the Mediterranean, lay to the west- 
ward. A series of irritating incidents which occurred 
with the French ships carrying contraband made clear 
once more that the strongest opponent to Italy's expan- 
sion was to be found in the same power which since 
Richelieu's day has considered a strong and united Italy 
inconsistent with her own welfare. Italian statesmen 
anticipated the revulsion of popular feeling toward the 
allied state to the north. D'Annunzio's vitriolic ode 
was suppressed, too violent newspapers restrained, and 



44 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

the interchange of diplomatic visits between Berlin, 
Vienna and Rome gave assurance that the three govern- 
ments were in accord. Italy refrained from any incite- 
ment of the Balkan peoples, and the war moved forward 
in the grooves which the friendly diplomacy of Austria 
had marked out. In the Triple Alliance Italy had the 
strongest guarantee that she would be able to hold her 
conquests without being obliged to have her title revised 
by unfriendly powers, thus fulfilling the prophetic words 
of the Italian statesman Prinetti on the renewal of the 
Alliance in 1902: "If ever the present condition of 
affairs in the Mediterranean is disturbed, Italy will be 
sure of finding no one to stand in the way of her just 
ambitions." 

A league of peace it had been for Italy within as well 
as without. Had it not been for this anchor, the rivalry 
between Italy and Austria in the Adriatic and Albania 
might early in the twentieth century have come to a 
decision of arms. It was directly due to the lack of 
aggressiveness in Italy's leaders in 1866 that the boun- 
daries of their kingdom were not made to march with the 
Julian Alps, and that the continuance of an Italia Irri- 
denta in southern Tyrol and on the Adriatic remained a 
sore spot to Italian patriots. From a shore almost lack- 
ing in ports where even a coasting freighter can ride 
protected the Italian mariner looked covetously over to a 
splendid succession of deepwater harbors from Trieste to 
Cattaro in Dalmatia, the historic outlet of his vigorous 
and fertile race. Italians as residents and immigrants 
swarmed along the Istrian and Dalmatian coast, and 
offered a perplexing problem to Austrian administration 
and diplomacy. Furthermore Italy sought for years to 
extend her influence in Albania, and Italian statesmen 
looked forward hopefully to a time when their country 
should be ready to extend a protectorate over the south- 
ern districts and coast of this rugged land. This of 
course ran directly counter to the plans of Austria, which 



ALLIES AND ENEMIES TO THE EAST 45 

for many years had sought by means of schools and re- 
ligious institutions to draw the Christian inhabitants of 
northern Albania directly under her influence. The 
marriage of King Victor Emmanuel III to the daughter of 
the doughty warrior-poet, King Nicholas of Montenegro 
increased the natural sympathy of the house of Savoy and 
the Italian people for this tiny state, which had become 
such a thorn in the side of Austria, and which with a 
curious mixture of chivalry and barbarism was ever 
ready to dig up the hatchet afresh. In the days before 
the Balkan wars of 191 2, when the snow melted on the 
Albanian mountains in the spring and the bold tribesmen 
saUied forth in their annual campaign against Turkish 
misrule, they equipped themselves with Italian war 
tools, brought over the Montenegrin mountains. 
I In these ethnic storms the Triple Alliance proved a 
strong anchor, and the Balkan wars of 191 2 and 1913 
seemed to knit Italy more firmly than ever to the north- 
ern powers. Whatever her rivalry with Austria, Italy 
must view the advent of an aggressive Slav state on the 
opposite shore of the narrow Adriatic as a mortal blow 
to her ambitions, and her suspicion of the Teuton was 
forgotten in the common danger. It seemed better to 
surrender forever her hopes of political expansion in 
Albania and the Epirus than to welcome a new rival to 
her seas. The ItaHan ambassador joined the other 
representatives of the Triple Alliance at the London 
conference in depriving Serbia of an Adriatic port and 
in forcing the Montenegrins out of Scutari. With 
Austria Italy stood as joint sponsor for the new state 
Albania. 

Nevertheless, neither the Italian statesmen nor people 
ceased for a moment to doubt Austria's intentions. 
ItaHan warships lay off Durazzo as interested observers 
of the struggle which Prince William of Wied made to 
maintain himself on his tottering throne against the 
attacks of the Moslem Albanians. Essad Pasha, the 



46 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

leader of the Albanian Mohammedans, found refuge in 
Italy after his expulsion from Durazzo; and the fact 
that Prince William had to fight with only hired troops 
and a few adventurers, while Austria forbade the re- 
cruiting of troops for his service in her dominions, pointed 
to rigid Italian watchfulness. Each of the jealous 
powers would apparently rather see anarchy continue 
in Albania indefinitely than run the risk of permitting 
the other an advantage. 

Another result of the Balkan wars which made the 
Triple Alliance of the greatest importance to Italy 
was the rise of the Greek power. The Hellenic king- 
dom was shorn of her conquests in the Epirus by the 
London diplomats, with Italy's earnest support. Dur- 
ing the war with Turkey in 191 1 the Italian navy had 
seized twelve of the Ionic Islands, the southeastern 
Sporades, which under the treaty of Lausanne were to 
be returned to Turkey when all of the terms of peace had 
been complied with. The following year Greece had oc- 
cupied the other islands of the ^Egean and meant to 
hold them if possible. The islands held by Italy, 
Hellenic in population and enthusiastically Greek in 
spirit, yearned to come under the Greek flag. More 
than any other power Greece had profited by the Balkan 
wars, and it was apparent that any further growth of the 
Hellenic spirit might easily threaten Italy's position in 
the eastern Mediterranean. 

Plainly then from the fall of 191 1 to the summer of 
1 914 the support of the Triple Alliance had been of the 
greatest possible moral help to Italy's security and ad- 
vancement. However, it must also have been plain to 
German and Austrian statesmen that, judging the 
future by the past, sic rebus stantibus had always to be 
underlined by those dealing with the peninsular kingdom. 
Bismarck once said that all contracts between great 
nations cease to be binding when they clash with the 
struggle for existence. Germany's ministers could not 



ALLIES AND ENEMIES TO THE EAST 47 

fail to be aware that while Italy's development had been 
made with the backing of the Triple AlKance, her progress 
was still girt by such dangers on every side that her very 
existence as a state might be threatened by her entry 
into war. Her western and southern coasts are washed 
by the home waters of the French fleet, her cities from 
Genoa to Brindisi He open to British naval guns. The 
conquest of Tripoh still occupied her army and weighed 
upon her finances. The sons of her fertile loins, who 
are to be found in every zone of both hemispheres, might 
at any moment call upon the mother land for protection. 
At home the Socialist organization had for years wielded 
a great political power, and had been aided in industrial 
crises by a violent spirit of republicanism and anarchy 
which repeatedly brought the government almost to the 
end of its resources. That in spite of these difficulties, 
in spite of general strikes and bitter party conflicts, in 
spite of a total lack of coal and a very scanty supply of 
other mineral resources, in spite of the appalhng want 
and misery of the agricultural provinces, Italy had been 
able to retain and improve her position among the great 
powers, was due to a poKcy of intense selfishness towards 
alKes as well as opponents. 

Nor could those German and Austrian agents whose 
duty it was to discover and weigh foreign opinion have 
been ignorant of Italian sentiment toward the northern 
allies. Public opinion, a stronger force in the peninsula 
than in either of the Germanic states, had always looked 
upon the Triple Alliance as a hard necessity. As a part 
of his national heritage the Italian breathes in from child- 
hood a deep-going and unique hatred of Austria. This 
f eehng rests not merely upon the age-old interference of the 
Teutonic race in ItaHan affairs. The individual German 
has also grown unpopular since the foundation of the 
new empire because of his thrift and the success with 
which he has invaded Italy's business life, as well as for 
the abruptness with which he sought to militarize the 



48 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

rounded outlines of Italian character. He has grown 
unpopular most of all for the way in which he has during 
the past four decades taken possession of the commerce 
and industry of the peninsula. 

That the situation must have been clear to the cabinets 
of Vienna and Berlin goes without saying. They prob- 
ably did not deceive themselves with any hopes that the 
peninsular state would support Teuton and Magyar 
against the Slav, nor could they have expected more 
than a strict neutrality from Italy in any conflict which 
brought France and England against the northern alhes. 
A tendency to misjudge Italian character and Italian 
policy has, however, always been one of the great weak- 
nesses of German diplomats since the Triple Entente 
came into existence. It is doubtful indeed if in the two 
decades which preceded the European War German press 
and people made any real progress toward an under- 
standing of Italy and its people. This ancient Teutonic 
incapacity, so productive of evil since the days of the 
Franconian and Hohenstauf en emperors, was never more 
manifest than at the time of the Algeciras Conference and 
during the Italo-Turkish war. For ages Italy had been 
the Mecca of cultured Germans, in recent decades every 
middle-class German crossed the Brenner or the Gott- 
hard at least once in his life, and German was heard 
increasingly in restaurant and art gallery, mountain inn 
and village tavern from Domodossola and Chiavenna to 
the Maltese Straits. Yet in German books and news- 
papers one still found the traditional criticisms of Italy 
as the classic land of art and filth, of beggary, bribery 
and administrative rottenness. Acres of newspaper 
articles discoursed on the squalor and misery of the 
Calabrian peasants or the exploits of the Neapolitan 
Camorra, but of such clean and model cities as Turin or 
the modern and efficient methods of irrigation and of 
agriculture in the Po Valley very little appeared, and the 
vigorous growth of the national spirit under the rotting 



ALLIES AND ENEMIES TO THE EAST 49 

crusts of old despotisms almost escaped notice. It was 
this persistent inability to understand the evolution of 
modern Italy which led to the surprises that shocked 
German diplomats at Algeciras and found German press 
and pubKc entirely unprepared to appreciate Italy's 
position at the outbreak of the European War. 



CHAPTER III 

The Rivalry with England 

Of all the national hatreds which blazed into fierce 
flame in the summer of 19 14 none struck the neutral 
observer more painfully than that between Germany and 
England. Teuton and Slav, German and Frenchman 
had struggled against each other for centuries in the 
valleys of the Vistula and the Meuse, and the renewal 
of the age-old rivalry in its most brutal form, though a 
staggering blow to modern civilization, had neverthe- 
less a certain historical justification. That Briton and 
German should really come to death-grips, however, 
seemed a defiance of the laws of nature. Sister peoples 
they are of what is in the main Teutonic stock. But as 
quarrels within a family are marked by a hatred more 
intense and a spirit less forgiving than is shown in strife 
with those of alien blood, so in the wild crescendo of 
hate which swelled from rival parties and camps in 
August 1 9 14 and after there was no note so shrill as those 
which rang across the North Sea. "The illusion of 
British world power must be destroyed once for all!" 
"The threat of German domination must vanish from 
Europe!" Indeed, one may say that not since the le- 
gions and galleys of Rome and Carthage locked in their 
death-struggle had there been shown a greater deter- 
mination on the part of two hostile peoples to humilate 
each other into the dust of national impotence whence 
no rise should be possible for generations to come. 

That this feeHng was not new was of course well 
known to those who had watched the progress of Anglo- 

50 



THE RIVALRY WITH ENGLAND 51 

German relations since the Boer War. In this period 
ahnost the first political chord which struck the ear of 
the foreigner who crossed the German frontier was that 
of hostility to England. It became in the first decade 
of the twentieth century the ground-tone of every polit- 
ical conversation and spread to every class of Germans, 
finally including the higher circles of the aristocracy and 
the serried ranks of the Social Democracy. This feehng 
had as its base a deep distrust of the island empire and 
its poHcies. "Perfidious Albion" as completely pre- 
occupied the mind of the German professional man or 
bourgeois shopkeeper as it did the mob in Paris in the 
days of Robespierre. 

This deep conviction of England's utter lack of honesty 
in diplomatic affairs and the general distrust of her 
world policy were the more striking in view of the historic 
friendship between Prussia and Great Britain. Fred- 
erick the Great faced successfully the circle of his foes 
only through the support of British subsidies; and 
although he bitterly resented the way he was left in the 
lurch by EngHsh statesmen in the later days of the 
Seven Years' War, British diplomats remained almost the 
sole support of Prussian policy during the last years of 
Frederick's reign. It was during the Napoleonic wars, 
however, that Prussian enthusiasm for England ran 
highest. The sturdy island kingdom, holding the great 
usurper at bay on the sea and slowly rolling his legions 
back in the Peninsular campaigns, was an inspiration to 
the Prussian patriots who were secretly sharpening their 
swords for the uprising against the tyrant, and British 
and Prussian arms celebrated a glorious common triumph 
at Waterloo. 

In these years of the Wars of Liberation German en- 
thusiasm for things English reached flood tide. The 
English lord appears in the romances of Jean Paul 
Richter as the personification of individual culture, an 
aristocrat not merely in birth but in heart and manners. 



52 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

Forth out of the narrow relations of hfe as pictured in 
Goethe's Wilhelm Meister or Jean Paul's Hesperus, the 
two most popular novels of Germany one hundred years 
ago, the German looked upon the travelled Englishman 
as the typical representative of that high personal cul- 
ture which the age regarded as the end and aim of exist- 
ence. The German of the beginning of the nineteenth 
century travelled Httle and Uved at home under th.6 hard 
hand of officialdom and squeezed into the narrowest 
social conditions : the Briton, in German eyes, drew in 
freedom with his first breath, and carrying his liberties 
with him, roved Hke a king through the world. This 
enthusiasm for the individual EngHshman found its 
culmination in the ideaHzation of Byron's character. 
To German youth of the twenties and thirties, half 
suffocated under the pressure of the pohtical reaction 
of those days, the English poet seemed a hero of individ- 
ual development. 

It was not only the individual Englishman with the 
cosmopoHtan poHsh of the man who had travelled far 
and seen much that impressed German pubHcists in the 
early part of the nineteenth century. The British con- 
stitution was the ideal of German liberals. The men 
who made the revolution of 1848, the poHtical idealists 
of the abortive National Assembly in the St. Paul's 
church in Frankfort, regarded the British constitution 
as the last word in Hberal development, an attitude which 
Prussian liberals kept for years after. When Bismarck 
took the rudder in Prussia in 1862, with the determina- 
tion to reorganize the miUtary system of the country, 
constitutionally if possible, independently of the con- 
stitution if necessary, the men who faced him on the 
Liberal benches stood for the British parliamentary 
system through thick and thin, and it was this enthu- 
siasm for British guarantees and restraints on arbitrary 
power, backed by the influence of Crown Prince Fred- 
erick, that resisted Bismarck until the victories of 1866 



THE RIVALRY WITH ENGLAND 53 

finally brought him a majority in the Prussian Diet. 
Even after the foundation of the new empire, the Crown 
Prince and his English wife, the daughter of Queen 
Victoria, formed a centre of liberalism in Berlin, in 
which enthusiasm for British institutions gave way very 
slowly to the advance of the German national spirit. 
Indeed the British constitution remained in many ways 
the ideal of National Liberals and Radicals in Germany 
for years after 187 1, though a deep hostility to British 
" imperialism " had long since taken possession of all 
classes of German Hberals. 

The beginnings of anti-British feeling in Germany 
must be sought in the attitude of the British press and 
public toward the young German empire. DisHke and 
distrust beget like feelings only too readily ; and while 
British public opinion heartily endorsed the breaking of 
Napoleon's power in 1870, the success of German arms 
was too thorough and the rise of the new confederacy too 
sudden not to alarm British prejudices. EngHsh sym- 
pathy with France increased as the end of the war came. 
The humiliation of the ancient rival was so complete 
as to arouse deep resentment on the part of the sport- 
loving nation across the Channel, and as usual, this 
resentment expressed itself toward the conqueror with 
a freedom and sharpness that could not fail to cut 
German sensitiveness to the quick. Bismarck's memoirs 
and those of his secretary Busch are filled with references 
to the bitter struggle which the Iron Chancellor waged 
against the court cabal in British interest centering 
around the Crown Princess Victoria. Slowly the con- 
viction won its way among the German people that in 
his opposition to this coterie Bismarck was not merely 
fighting liberalism, but that he was contending for a 
national policy of the greatest importance. Thus in the 
seventies and early eighties the foundation was slowly 
but strongly laid for the anti-British feeling which was 
later to overtop every other national enthusiasm. 



54 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

That the feehng against England remained latent for 
so many years was due to British foreign policy, which 
was until the end of the last century chiefly directed 
against Russia. England has always made it her aim 
to protect the balance of power on the Continent by 
opposing that power which seems to threaten the bal- 
ance most aggressively. Thus she opposed France under 
Louis XIV in the age of Queen Anne, France and Austria 
in the following generation, and Napoleon until the Cor- 
sican usurper ended his days on one of the most barren 
British islands. She could not be insensible to the 
rapid advance of Germany's miHtary power, reinforced 
as it was in 1879 and 1882 by alKances with Austria 
and Italy. It was, however, a period of Russian ag- 
gression, and Russia was the power with which British 
interests colUded. To see how thoroughly this idea 
pervaded English offlcial and miHtary circles until 
toward the end of the century one needs only to read 
Kipling's sombre tale of the Indian border, "The Man 
who Was." Thus it came about that British diplomats 
supported Bismarck against Russia at the Congress of 
Berlin in 1878 ; and after the latter's check in the Bal- 
kans had turned the activities of the Czar's statesmen 
and soldiers from the Bosphorus toward Afghanistan, 
British diplomacy made Germany far-reaching con- 
cessions. In 1884 and 1885 Great Britain met Bismarck 
fully halfway in the negotiations which preceded the 
establishment of the German colony in southwest Africa. 
Here for the first time the great Chancellor came fully 
and fairly into collision with British diplomacy and more 
than held his own. Several years later, while fighting 
the intrigues of the court circle about the Empress 
Victoria he summed up German opinion of English 
diplomats in a conversation with his press agent Busch : 
"Humanity, peace and Hberty, — those are always their 
pretexts, when they cannot by way of a change invoke 
Christianity and the introduction of the blessings of 



THE RIVALRY WITH ENGLAND 55 

civilization to savage and semi-barbarous peoples." 
In fact the supposed influence of the EngHsh royal 
family on the Emperor Frederick and his son, WiUiam 
II, was the cause of the bitterest and coarsest attacks 
which have ever been made on the Hohenzollern dy- 
nasty by its otherwise loyal subjects. No Socialist 
writer has ever ventured to go so far in denunciation of 
WilHam II as the monarchical Pan- Germanic press did 
during the exciting days of the Boer War. 

Long before Bismarck's retirement German industrial 
development had begun to go forward in a way that 
threatened British trade. While up to 1880 Germany 
had hardly been regarded as a competitor of England 
at all in the international market, in the sixteen years 
which elapsed between the acquisition of the first 
German colony and the Boer war EngHsh salesmen found 
themselves anticipated by German wares even in the 
remotest corners of South America and Asia. Until 
1890 British trade had dominated the colonial markets ; 
after 1890 there began an influx of an ever widening 
stream of the products of German industries. These 
wares were introduced by carefully trained men, who 
understood the language of the buyer and were prepared 
to meet his demands and adapt themselves to his tastes. 
It is dangerous to generaHze as to national traits, 
but it may safely be said that at this time a concih- 
atory spirit was not characteristic of the British manu- 
facturer, who was wont to rely too much on the quality 
of his product for a successful sale. The German manu- 
facturer gave to the subject of sales the same careful 
attention as to the perfection of the means of production, 
and the far-flung network of industrial and trade 
schools — with their capstone, the Handelshochschulen, 
the commercial universities, which came into being 
toward the end of the century — won so many vic- 
tories for German trade that they soon attracted an 
ever increasing number of English students to the 



56 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

Fatherland. Trade rivalry always creates a basis favor- 
able to political bitterness ; and the enormous growth 
of German trade, going in German bottoms into mar- 
kets which up to the last decade of the nineteenth 
century had been preeminently English, was destined 
to lay the basis for a national rivalry which was certain 
to express itself as soon as the political situation per- 
mitted it. 

Many minor signs of the growing German dislike for 
EngHsh poHcy and EngHsh resentment over German 
rivalry showed themselves in the early nineties. The 
explosion came when Dr. Jameson made his ill-advised 
raid into the Transvaal in 1895. At this violation of the 
rights of the racially related Boers German wrath 
against the British burst into an expression of hatred 
which was nation-wide and found vent among all 
classes, occasionally in dignified form, more often, as is 
apt to be the case with national feeling deeply aroused, 
in ways that were violent and sometimes puerile. After 
Jameson and his party were suppressed. Kaiser William, 
in January 1896, probably at the suggestion of his 
foreign minister, the aggressive Marschall von Bie- 
berstein, whose work in building the Turkish alliance 
will be described below (page 77), telegraphed to 
President Kriiger, congratulating him on having over- 
come the enemies of his country without the necessity 
of calling on friendly foreign powers. No act could 
have been more unfortunate from an international 
standpoint, unless Germany really meant to go to war in 
defense of the Boer states. In England the publication 
of the telegram was greeted with amazed resentment; 
in Germany it was the match which exploded the whole 
mine of bitter dislike, the pent-up sense of restraint 
before England's power, the hatred of the older com- 
mercial rival who claimed to play the role of dictator 
in every corner of the world overseas. And when in 
1899 the inevitable war between England and the South 



THE RIVALRY WITH ENGLAND 57 

African republics finally broke out, it found the Germans 
as one man on the side of the Boers. 

To those who know the force of German idealism this 
could be no surprise. During all of the European crises 
for one hundred years, from the Greek struggle for in- 
dependence down, German pubhc opinion has inclined 
to champion the cause of the weaker party, even when 
national interests were involved on the other side. Now 
the empire through press and publicists raised its voice 
as one man in favor of the two Kttle states in their 
struggle against the British world monopoly. This, 
however, was the attitude of every European people 
and of both Americas as well : what gave a pecuHarly 
sharp point to German invective against England was 
not rage at the throttling of the Boer republics nor the 
much-exploited racial kinship between Dutch and Ger- 
man. No European nation was so thoroughly informed 
as Germany, thanks to the patient, scientific methods 
of its press, as to the real character of the Transvaal 
repubhcs, and no nation would have made shorter shrift 
with the Boers, had Germany stood in Great Britain's 
place. The real cause of Germany's ardent champion- 
ship lay in the feehng, often expressed during the war, 
that the sturdy Dutch South Africans were really fight- 
ing the battles of Germany against the hated Anglo- 
Saxon rival. 

To an American who spent the years 1899 to 1901 in 
Germany and who lived through the anti-British demon- 
strations which accompanied the English defeats and 
still more the EngHsh victories in South Africa, there 
can be little pleasure but much enHghtenment in re- 
calKng the manifestations of national intolerance. The 
pro-Boer, or rather the anti-British feeling showed it- 
self at every public gathering, from the full-throated 
singing of the Boer national hymn in restaurants and 
theatres to prayers in the churches for the success of the 
Boer arms. Some of the demonstrations took the form 



58 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

of a rowd3dsm which is happily rare in German life, 
such as the insulting of Englishmen and Englishwomen 
on the streets or the breaking of windows in English 
boarding homes in Hanover and Dresden. For such 
things one can hardly hold a nation responsible : they 
are the manifestations of political unripeness which 
come to the fore in certain quarters whenever the 
national soul is deeply moved. Even newspapers of 
high standards added their testimony as to the agitated 
condition of the public mind by allowing themselves to 
accept every report of Boer success and every rumor 
of British cruelty as gospel. The press in Germany, as 
will be pointed out below, has the habit, not unknown 
in other lands, of allowing its editorial views to en- 
croach on its news columns, and this political im- 
maturity, — for it can be called nothing else, — which 
warps and twists the unwelcome news of defeats into 
victories, displayed itself during the days of the relief 
of Ladysmith and Mafeking even in the larger met- 
ropoHtan journals. It was the same political imma- 
turity which during the war between America and Spain 
caused reputable newspapers in Berlin, Cologne and 
Munich to accept the wildest reports of Spanish vic- 
tories sent out from Madrid with perfect creduHty, and 
to spread them before their readers in the blackest of 
type, while the Associated Press despatches from 
Washington were printed in obscure corners and usually 
in garbled form, plentifully besprinkled with editorial 
question marks and exclamation points. Similarly the 
German press in the war between Italy and Turkey in 
1911-12, having backed the losing horse, printed and 
endorsed many extravagant reports from Constantinople 
regarding Turkish victories in Tripoli and Cyrenaica, 
even though the editors and every intelligent reader 
knew that communication of news between North 
Africa and the Golden Horn was out of the question. 
Already during the Boer War the press tone in Germany 



THE RIVALRY WITH ENGLAND 59 

toward England had become marked by the notes of 
slander and hatred which swelled fifteen years later into 
shrill discords. A perfect riot of abuse of everything 
British ran at that time through even the better informed 
press. On the other hand, with a romanticism truly 
German, the makers of pubHc opinion introduced the 
Boers to their readers as a race of peasants Kke those 
famihar to every German in Schiller's Wilhelm Tell, — 
simple and pious children of nature attacked in their 
holiest rights. To the same readers the British were 
represented as a cruel people, steeped in Hes and reeking 
with the blood of primitive races, eager for an easy 
conquest over inferiors but pusillanimous in battle with 
equals. 

The motives of a nation's actions are as mixed as 
those of an individual, and tribute must be paid to the 
noble feeling which inspired many Germans in their en- 
thusiasm for the under dog. Nevertheless it cannot be 
doubted that well-informed German editors were under 
no illusion regarding the barbarity and selfishness of 
the Boers : the very immaturity of public expression in 
Germany betrayed the fact that the greater part of the 
nation cared nothing for Boer success but everything 
for the humihation of England. "They are fighting 
our battles down there on the kopjes of South Africa," 
was heard again and again, and there is no doubt that 
many Germans, nursed on the legend of England's 
decadence, already saw the Union Jack fading before 
the black-white-red banner as the ruling standard of the 
colonial world. England's naval position was, however, 
in no wise weakened by the struggle ; and the jealousy 
of Dual and Triple Alliance of each other prevented any 
harmony of action towards the intervention which 
Russia at least would have welcomed. In addition, the 
German Emperor himself, as shown in a memorable 
interview in the London Daily Telegraph in 1908 (cf. 
page in), had at that time extremely friendly feelings 



6o THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

for England, and went so far as to work out a plan of 
campaign for the British advance, which he caused to 
be criticised by his general staff and forwarded to 
London. This act of "personal government," in its 
way as arbitrary as any ever committed by the Peters 
and Alexanders of Russia, might perhaps have caused 
revolutionary outbreaks, had it become known in Ger- 
many at the time of greatest national excitement, in- 
stead of nine years later. 

The Boer war, which marked the beginning of so many 
new movements in the political life of England, opened a 
new chapter in the relations between England and Ger- 
many. The Germans saw their great rival, who had 
preceded them into the field of " imperial " politics 
by four generations, enfeebled almost to the point of 
exhaustion, and yet so weak was the German fleet that 
the empire was unable to take advantage of the favor- 
able conjuncture in any way, or even, if need arose, to 
protect its own merchant marine from arbitrary search 
or seizure by British cruisers scouting for contraband. 
No object lesson could have been driven home upon any 
people with more telling force. If Germany were ever 
to play a more important role than that of an impotent 
and agitated spectator in overseas affairs, the mailed 
fist must also be able to make itself felt on blue water. 
Enthusiasm for the building of a great fleet, which had 
begun to be nursed into Hfe by friends of the colonies 
in 1896 and had made great progress even before the 
war, grew now by leaps and bounds. In the spring of 
1898 the government had forced the naval bill through 
the Reichstag in the face of the opposition of the entire 
Left and a part of the Centre : two years later amid 
demonstrations of popular enthusiasm and with the 
support of practically all parties in the Reichstag ex- 
cept the Social Democrats and the anti-national fac- 
tions, a new law was passed which should in six years 
more than double the size of the German fleet. In the 



THE RIVALRY WITH ENGLAND 6i 

meantime the Navy League, which had been organized 
in 1898, found all classes receptive for the agitation 
which it carried on by means of public meetings, illus- 
trated lectures and countless articles in the press. After 
1900 the enthusiasm for the building of a great fleet 
grew rapidly to a point where the ministry could hardly 
bring in proposals fast enough to suit the majority of 
the nation. Most surprising was the way in which the 
naval storm swept the entire Left along, when one recalls 
how slowly and hesitatingly the Liberal and Radical 
parties in Germany had risen to the conception of the 
colonial and overseas future of the Fatherland. The 
SociaHsts still protested, but it was a hfeless and formal 
protest. Here and there a Radical paper sounded a 
note of warning at the speed with which the nation 
was pledging away its resources in the effort to rival 
England on the seas; nevertheless in 191 2 the entire 
Radical party voted tremendous additions to the fleet, 
and when the Defense Bill of 1913 was brought forward, 
no member of the Left except the Social Democrats 
Hfted his voice against a further strengthening of the navy. 
Most striking of all was the way in which districts Hke 
Bavaria and Wiirtemberg, remote from the seacoast, 
were swept along in the common enthusiasm, showing 
how fully local selfishness and particularism had given 
way before the idea of a " Greater Germany." 

As usual the British were slow to take alarm. Bitter- 
ness over Germany's trade rivalry and deep resentment 
at the violent partisanship and accusations of the 
Germans during the Boer war were increasingly evident 
in the Enghsh press, but the new century was well started 
before EngHshmen reaHzed that the industrious Germans 
were really preparing to threaten Britain's naval su- 
premacy. Not indeed until the publication of the naval 
program of 1906 did the London papers and their 
readers become thoroughly aroused. EngHshmen, al- 
ready restive under the rapid growth of Germany's 



62 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

trade, could not construe the tremendous increase of 
the German fleet in any other way than as a direct 
threat to overthrow the mistress of the seas. The time- 
honored idea that Britain's existence as a nation de- 
pends on her abiHty to hold the ocean against the 
combined forces of any two hostile nations must be aban- 
doned ; the island kingdom must exert itself to maintain 
a safe leadership over the German empire alone. After 
the first alarm, as soon as the popular mind had become 
convinced that the Admiralty was alive to the situation, 
pubHc anxiety was relieved, only to arise anew as from 
time to time the Conservative press brought Germany's 
naval growth more and more clearly before British 
readers. Certain London papers, indeed, made of the 
"German peril" a regular bugaboo in order to put life 
into the poHtical situation at home. 

Since 1904 English foreign poHcy has had the " German 
peril" as its ground tone. It was this that brought 
England and France together in 1904 and created the 
Entente, for which King Edward's foreign poHcy has 
usually received the credit. It was the weakening of 
Russia in the war with Japan and the consequent loss 
of balance in eastern Europe in favor of the Triple 
AlHance which induced England to open the way for 
the ancient enemy and rival, now weakened and for the 
present harmless, to enter a friendly understanding. 
The Triple Entente between England, France and Russia 
which finally came into being in 1907, had its prelude 
in common action at the Algeciras Conference of 1906 ; 
and the entire Morocco controversy showed a com- 
munity of interest among Germany's three rivals and 
solidified the ring which English diplomacy had been 
drawing around the growing ambitions of her feared 
antagonist. The matter reached a crisis in the summer 
of 191 1, when the German warship was sent to Agadir 
on the coast of southern Morocco (cf. page 18), and 
Mr. Asquith and Mr. Lloyd George, the former in the 



THE RIVALRY WITH ENGLAND 63 

House of Commons, the latter in a Guildhall speech, 
declared in language but thinly veiled that under no 
circumstances would Great Britain permit the German 
Empire to secure any point which might serve as a 
naval base on the West African coast. To understand 
the bitter explosion in Germany over this curt warning 
one must recall that many voices, not merely Pan- Ger- 
manic voices, were clamoring for the cession of southern 
Morocco, and there seems no doubt that France, if left 
to her own devices, would have wilUngly yielded to 
Germany control over the country to the south if she 
could thereby have secured a free hand on the Mediter- 
ranean and in northern Morocco. So much the more 
humiliating therefore was the declaration of the British 
ministry, and even a less sensitive and honor loving 
nation than the German would have resented it. All 
the world now knows how close England and Germany 
were to war in August and September 191 1 ; only the 
greatest self-restraint on the part of the two foreign 
offices, for which Germany, as in a sense the aggrieved 
power, deserved the greater credit, prevented a clash 
of fleets in the North Sea and the frightful disaster to 
civilization which finally came two years and eleven 
months later. That portion of German pubHc opinion 
which was ever able to view the affair calmly severely 
criticised the government for leading the nation into a 
bhnd alley and provoking a humiUation. 

Once more Germany gave back before England's 
sea power, and accepted a settlement with France 
which resigned hopes of a foothold on the West 
African coast for an inland equatorial district of minor 
economic value and no strategic importance. Once 
more the empire saw its freedom on the sea, a freedom 
which is directly dependent on naval bases, checked by 
British jealousy. Stripped of all the wild words of 
Pan-Germanic chauvinists, Germany's attitude toward 
England was just this : " Great Britain rules over one- 



64 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

fourth of the earth's surface and one-third of its in- 
habitants. She has girdled the globe with naval sta- 
tions and fortified ports. She opposes and checkmates 
Germany in all of her efforts to obtain naval bases and 
coaHng harbors, and she looks with a bilious and dis- 
approving eye on the building of a fleet which is to enable 
the empire to furnish adequate and legitimate protec- 
tion to its growing commerce. If she takes every op- 
portunity to thwart Germany's natural ambition, she 
must accept the consequences when the young German 
fleet shall have grown great enough to hazard a conflict 
with the colossus. When that day comes, let England 
look out ! Then the storm-defended isle shall have its 
security tested." One did not need to look in the fire- 
breathing BerHn Post or the Tdgliche Rundschau for 
such expressions : they were to be found even in such 
well-balanced journals as the Frankfurter Zeitung or the 
Kolnische Zeitung, and in provincial newspapers from 
Strasburg to Konigsberg. The additions to the fleet 
in April and May 191 2 and again in the budget of 191 3 
were voted by a Reichstag, the majority of whose mem- 
bers were Liberal or Socialist, with enthusiasm, and every 
expression of Winston Churchill's in the House of Com- 
mons with respect to Germany's naval power, especially 
the unfortunate reference to the German fleet as a 
"luxury," called forth bitter outbursts of distrust and 
indignation in the Reichstag and the pubhc press. 

England then — so held German patriots — was 
Germany's great stumbling block. All that German 
thrift and industry had been able to accomplish in the 
past decades, all the attainments of German inventors 
and technicians, all the triumphs of Germany in the 
rivalry for the world's trade, rested upon an insecure 
basis, so long as Great Britain ruled the seas and blocked 
every avenue to German political advance oversea. It 
was not British technicians or scholars or workmen or 
salesmen that kept Germany from taking the "place 



THE RIVALRY WITH ENGLAND 65 

in the sun" to which she was justly entitled, but the 
rude power of British bottoms and cannon. Having 
by robbery and chicane won numerous naval vantage 
spots, Great Britain now interposed with dog-in-the- 
manger insolence a determined opposition to the reason- 
able claims of the empire to poKtical expansion. '' Car- 
thage must be destroyed!" cried the Pan-Germanists, 
and not only these. "Great Britain has by her h5^o- 
critical diplomacy and by treacherous incitement of one 
nation against another ruled the world long enough. 
Sooner or later she will try to destroy Germany's power ; 
either she or we must perish." 

This wave of bitterness, which reached its first flood 
height just after the close of the Morocco episode, soon 
had its effect in England. Across the Channel, as has 
been noted, hostile feeling against the Germans first 
became keen as a result of the Boer war. Frenzied 
attacks on the British national character, unpleasant 
caricatures of the British royal family, including the 
aged Queen Victoria, outbreaks of rowdyism toward 
EngHsh residents and travellers, all bore their natural 
fruit in England. National mistrust of German poHcy 
had, as we have seen, a far deeper foundation, resting 
on the commercial and industrial rivalry by which 
Germany had continually gained upon the former un- 
disputed mistress of the world's trade. To this is to 
be added the wild and irresponsible talk of the Pan- 
Germanists, in whose mind the young empire was some 
day to revive the glories of the Holy Roman Empire 
of the Middle Ages, and the Hohenzollern, Hke Henry 
V or Barbarossa, to hold sway over a succession of 
vassal states from the North Sea and the Baltic to 
southern Italy. Such fantastic dreams as this, though 
entertained by not a few German patriots, were not 
taken seriously by the great majority of the nation. 
Nevertheless, it is not to be wondered at that the British 
public, already exasperated by the violence of loose- 



66 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

mouthed German journalists, grew mistrustful over 
the reports of these and other wilder dreams of German 
brochurist and editor, especially when accompanied by 
accounts of the rapid growth of the German fleet. The 
British rate-payer, hard hit as he was by the introduction 
of compulsory insurance and other social legislation, 
might have been willing to accept the explanation that 
the German fleet was for defense rather than conquest 
but for the constant stream of chauvinist threats 
launched from Berlin and the provincial press. Why did 
the Germans need a great fleet? This was a question 
which the average Englishman now refused to answer 
save in one way : "It is a threat against England." In 
fact, during the several crises of the Morocco negotia- 
tions, notably in 1905 and 191 1, a panic developed which 
did no credit to the British reputation for poise and 
self-control. While the government in August 191 1 
unostentatiously made all preparations to mobilize 
the home naval strength against a German naval 
attack, frightened Enghshmen began to see the smoke 
of Germany's battleships already on the horizon and 
to smell out a spy in every German waiter. The arrest 
and trial of spies, one of the most disagreeable tasks 
that can fall to the duty of any government, began to 
be carried on in 191 1 on both sides of the North Sea 
with more enthusiasm than judgment, with, however, 
the difference that German judicial procedure has cer- 
tain Star Chamber methods which are highly repugnant 
to British feelings. Such trials as those of Captain 
Stewart of the British Naval Reserve, who was sentenced 
by the Imperial Supreme Court in Leipsic in January 
191 2 to five years' imprisonment, aroused deep resent- 
ment in England. 

In the meantime naval armament went on. In 191 2 
the British Admiralty formally abandoned its "two for 
one" poHcy, and announced that henceforth British 
navy yards would lay down three warships for every 



THE RIVALRY WITH ENGLAND 67 

two which were undertaken by the leading rival nation, 
a program which was afterwards taken to mean "six- 
teen to ten" in comparative fighting units. No end of 
the battle of pocketbooks was visible. So long as 
Germany was convinced that England was constantly 
plotting to isolate the empire and block its legitimate 
efforts towards poHtical expansion, so long as Britons 
felt that the German fleet was destined for the destruc- 
tion of the British sea power and a threat against Eng- 
land's national existence, so long must the terrific race 
continue. Hypnotized by its dread of the other, it 
seemed that neither party could pause until the moment 
of exhaustion should be reached. There were signs on 
both sides, however, that business circles felt that the 
limit was being approached. Before the end of 191 2 
'there were not lacking voices, chiefly Liberal and Radical, 
in both countries which called loudly for an end to the 
exhausting competition. 

With the Balkan Wars of 191 2 and 1913 a turn in 
the poHtical relations of Germany and England seemed 
to have been reached. Each of these crises tried to the 
utmost the resources of European diplomacy. The 
formation of the Balkan Alliance had endangered 
Austria-Hungary's position and Austria-Hungary was 
Germany's only dependable ally. In case of an attack 
by the Franco-Russian coalition, even unsupported by 
England, Germany would, without the help of Austria, 
have had a desperate task to maintain herseh. Thus, 
as we have seen, the German general staff brought before 
the Reichstag in the spring of 19 13 a Defense Bill, 
which increased the active strength of the army by 
136,000 officers and men and 27,000 horses, provided 
for the aviation corps, added to the transportation and 
intelhgence equipment and prepared for an enormous 
amount of new war material. These additions in men 
and material which cost the Entente Alhes so dear in 
the early stages of the European War were mainly ad- 



A 



68 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

ditions to the army. The lesson of 191 1 had, however, 
taught both Germany and England that a conflict 
between the two countries would find British troops 
fighting on the Continent with Germany's opponents. 
As shown by the documents found by the Germans in 
the Belgian archives at Brussels, the British authorities 
had counted upon the violation of Belgian neutrahty 
as a strong probability and were laying plans during the 
Morocco crises in 1905 and 191 1 and during the Balkan 
crisis of 191 2 to face this emergency. In 1913 the 
rift in the Balkan League relieved Austria and her 
Germanic ally from the fear of a solid alliance of the 
southeastern powers, fired by Russian intrigue, but the 
question of an outlet for Serbia to the Adriatic was still 
pending and big with terrible possibilities. 

The searching of diplomatic hearts which followed the 
outbreak of war in August 19 14 revealed how close 
Europe had been to a conflagration in the two preceding 
years. The London Conference of the powers which 
marked off the new boundaries in the Balkans, carving 
out an autonomous Albania as a buffer state and a 
breastwork against the Slavic march to the Adriatic, 
stood under the leadership of Sir Edward Grey, but 
Germany shared control with England, and both powers 
seem to have worked honestly and earnestly to preserve 
the world's peace, which at that time tottered to a fall. 
For the delay of a year in letting loose the horrors of 
war upon Europe the honest effort of both powers 
deserves all credit. Indeed, it must be emphasized 
that when in January and April of the fateful year 19 14 
the German press began to be filled with mutterings of 
Russia's war preparations, the greatest military and 
the greatest naval power in the world had at last settled 
down to a state of affairs which, while armed and watch- 
ful, nevertheless seemed to contain some possibilities 
of a final understanding. In 191 2 Germany had sent 
her best diplomat, Baron Marschall von Bieberstein, 



THE RIVALRY WITH ENGLAND 69 

as ambassador to London. He it was who had spun 
the web of German influence around the Turkish sultan, 
and much was counted on from his trained touch, which 
Hke the hand of steel under a silken glove knew how 
to bring the play of force under the form of a caress. 
But fate willed otherwise. In less than a year Baron 
Marschall died and his place was taken by Prince 
Lichnowsky, a member of the Silesian landed aris- 
tocracy. A gentleman of culture and refinement, the 
new German ambassador won the respect of the 
British diplomats and seemed in a fair way to accom- 
pHsh much for the improvement of Anglo- German re- 
lations when the bomb and pistol of the assassins of 
Sarajevo lighted a fuse which no diplomatic skill could 
extinguish. 

To the superficial observer it would seem, indeed, 
that the most sensitive questions of difference between 
Germany and England had been settled. Morocco 
was defiiiitely out of the way. The Bagdad Railway, 
which had seemed so big with trouble, had reached a 
stage of preliminary agreement. This question will 
be treated in some detail in the next chapter. It was, 
in effect, nothing more than a race between Great 
Britain and Germany as to which power should develop 
the fat basin of the Tigris and Euphrates. However, 
in the face of the far more dangerous potentiahties of 
the Balkan problem both powers showed themselves 
ready to give and take, and a conference on the Bagdad 
Railway between the governments of London, Berlin 
and Constantinople in the spring of 191 3 was carried 
on in a new spirit of conciliation. Liberal journals on 
both sides of the North Sea greeted with enthusiasm 
these signs of an attitude of compromise, which is the 
first essential to a lasting peace between nations. Indeed, 
during the two years preceding the outbreak of the 
European War many elements in both countries were 
feverishly at work, striving to make a conflict between 



70 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

Germany and England impossible. Far-sighted men on 
both sides of the North Sea recognized how much peace- 
ful rivalry had done and might yet do in stimulating both 
nations in the field of commercial enterprise, and Ger- 
man trade circles particularly bent the weight of their 
influence on Radical and National Liberal press and 
parHamentary leaders to cultivate better relations with 
England. 

Peace between England and Germany was, however, 
not to be. The sources of their rivalry lay too close 
to the heart of each people and had become too vitally 
interwoven with the ambitions of the British and German 
races. Enough has been said to show that it was not the 
neutrality of Belgium or the protection of French ports, 
no mere "scrap of paper," whether it contained an 
international treaty covering Belgian neutrality or a 
British agreement with Russia, that brought Great 
Britain into the circle of Germany's foes in August 1914. 
Ever since the Boer War the stage was being set for the 
conflict, and if in 191 1 over a question in which the 
safety of British commerce was only indirectly involved 
peace could scarcely be maintained, it is hardly thinkable 
that in a struggle which put at stake the entire balance 
on the European continent, the British people would 
stand idly by while the central powers triumphed. This 
was the fact, and the diplomatic sparring revealed in 
White and Yellow and Orange books and papers reads 
like the arguments of clever lawyers over a case which 
all had decided must be appealed to a higher court. 
Despite all humanitarian feeling and talk about Bel- 
gium, Great Britain must sooner or later have taken up 
arms to prevent Germany from making herself stronger 
on blue water as an issue of the conflict. The only 
way in which the Berlin diplomats could have kept Great 
Britain out of the war would have been by accepting 
from the London government such restrictions on the 
movements of the Kaiser's armies and fleet against France 



THE RIVALRY WITH ENGLAND 71 

as would have insured Germany's defeat. To this point 
the iron logic of events had brought the rival nations. 
The failure to reahze this clearly before the beginning 
of the negotiations which led up to the war of 1914 must 
be set down as one of the most grievous mistakes of 
German diplomacy. 



CHAPTER IV 

Expansion and Ambitions 

If in the first decade of the twentieth century the 
nations outside of the Triple Alliance had been asked 
to vote as to which power constituted the greatest 
danger to the peace of the world, there is no doubt that 
the verdict would have fallen almost unanimously 
against Germany. "Not believing in peace, the Ger- 
mans do not know how to organize peace," writes 
the French historian Gabriel Hanotaux with respect to 
the establishment and continual strengthening of the 
mihtary system by which the Germans stood on guard 
against French revenge and Russian aggressions. In 
fact, most historians would probably agree with the 
French academician and statesman in putting upon 
Germany the responsibility for the so-called "armed 
peace" which prevailed in Europe for forty-three years 
after the rise of united Germany and united Italy. 
Having torn Alsace and Lorraine from France by vio- 
lence, the empire felt obliged to retain them by a con- 
stant display of force. The presence in central Europe 
of a great power armed to the teeth made it necessary 
for its neighbors to adopt the same poUcy ; and France 
and Austria, Italy and even Belgium and Switzerland 
and Holland put forth unremitting and exhausting efforts 
to get every man of weapon-bearing age within reach 
of the call to mobilization, pouring out the wealth of 
their taxpayers for new cannon, new explosives, new 
uniforms and new-model equipment of every character. 

72 



EXPANSION AND AMBITIONS 73 

Scarcely was the infantry equipped with a new type of 
magazine rifle when the invention of some deadlier 
device demanded an expensive substitution. Each 
fresh discovery in the field of science, such as the wire- 
less telegraph, the dirigible balloon and the aeroplane, 
was immediately organized into an instrument for help 
in war with further demands on the taxpayers. When 
government means did not suffice, the drum beat of the 
chauvinistic press called forth voluntary offerings 
from private citizens, and here again nation rivalled 
nation, as in the public subscriptions for the equipment 
of an aviation corps in France and Germany in 191 2. 

In arraigning Germany for inciting to this mad race 
of pocketbooks, foreign critics are apt to forget that the 
Empire is almost entirely without natural defenses. It 
has, as Joseph de Maistre once said of Austria, "neigh- 
bors on every side and frontiers nowhere." One forgets 
also that for centuries Germany was a battle ground 
for the selfi.shness and bloodlust of Frenchmen, Dutch- 
men, Swedes, Spaniards and the Slavic peoples, and 
blames the nation for having taken the only means 
which under the infirmities of the present stage of civiHza- 
tion are effective for insuring peace and prosperity within 
the confines of a great state. 

The picture of Germany as the naughty boy on the 
international playground was drawn and retouched by 
the Russian, French and British press until the popular 
mind outside of central Europe came to accept it without 
question. Here the Germans were greatly handicapped 
by the lack of an international press agency of standing. 
Reuter's Bureau, which enwraps the world with its 
network of correspondents, is under British control. 
The great London dailies, like the Times and the Daily 
Chronicle, have at their disposal a host of far-scattered 
newsgatherers, highly trained men, whose position with 
these powerful organs — by weight of tradition, if 
nothing else — gives them an insight into difficult 



74 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

situations all over the world and enables them to speak 
with authority. Against these efl&cient organs of 
newsgathering and publicity Germany has had only 
Wolff's Bureau, a comparatively weak of&cial mouth- 
piece, altogether without standing outside of the Father- 
land, and newspapers whose names are scarcely known 
beyond the German-speaking world. The shortcomings 
of the German papers as newsgatherers will be dis- 
cussed below, here it is enough to note that the tone of 
immaturity and triviality which has marked the German 
press in dealing with poHtical affairs has been especially 
noticeable in its foreign correspondence. In Paris, 
Washington, St. Petersburg and Rome the correspond- 
ents of the leading London papers are men whose intel- 
lectual and social gifts often give them almost a diplo- 
matic standing. How different the material is from which 
German correspondents are drawn becomes appallingly 
clear when one reads over a few of the futile, captious 
and misinformed letters which have appeared from these 
capitals in the Berlin press. The international in- 
fluence of the German press is also greatly reduced by 
the fact that German is only just becoming an inter- 
national language. For centuries French and EngHsh 
have been the medium of world discourse, and the difl&- 
culties of German make its rivalry with the two West 
European dialects no easy matter. Up to the outbreak 
of the European war most German news came to America 
through EngHsh channels, and our journals rarely took 
an entirely independent attitude toward Germany's for- 
eign relations. 

*■ The results of this Anglo-French control over news 
channels were evident in every crisis. Not merely 
among its rivals, but in every country where German is 
a foreign idiom, Germany was made to appear as an 
interloper in international affairs. In the struggles in 
Samoa in 1898, in the Morocco affair, in Austria's an- 
nexation of the Balkan provinces in 1908, in the war 



EXPANSION AND AMBITIONS 75 

between Italy and Turkey, in the contest between Turkey 
and the Balkan states, Germany was regularly repre- 
sented to the world by the Anglo-Franco-American 
press as a trouble maker. The supposed vaulting ambi- 
tion of the German Emperor or the greed of the Berhn 
government appeared always as a cloud on the European 
horizon. In their zeal to publish to the world the 
German danger the opponents of the empire did not 
even pretend to be logical. Thus German efforts to 
get a predominant influence in southern Morocco 
caused bitter criticism in the same London and New York 
journals which found France's assumption of practically 
sovereign rights over an ahen race a step in the beneficent 
progress of civilization. Germany, it was said, could be 
building a great fleet only in order to satisfy her "land 
hunger," while practically the same movement on the 
part of France and Russia appeared in the British in- 
fluenced press as a perfectly natural step in national 
development. In the discussion of every international 
question Germany was made to appear in the uttermost 
parts of the civiHzed world marked with the stigma of a 
disturber of the peace. 

For this attitude of the great family of civilized nations 
outside of Austria-Hungary not all of the blame rested 
upon foreign misrepresentation. A considerable part 
was to be credited to the faults of German diplomacy. 
Bismarck once said that the want of finesse was, accord- 
ing to circumstances, now a strength and now a weak- 
ness of German policy. In the field of latter-day diplo- 
macy it showed itself almost entirely a weakness. The 
fluctuations and uncertainties, the false starts and sub- 
sequent withdrawals of German poHcy in the years 
between 1895 and 191 5 led again and again to sharp 
criticism in the Reichstag and among thinking German 
publicists. The vacillating course which entered on 
a vigorous policy in China, only to abandon it after 
expensive investments, showed a gleam of over-zealous 



76 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

friendship for Spain on a memorable May i in Manila 
harbor and then sought by every means to re- 
move American suspicions, neglected a golden oppor- 
tunity for England's friendship after the Boer War, 
failed to win the support of Spain in the early stages of 
the Morocco imbrogho, — this course cost German 
patriots dear in the two decades after Bismarck's retire- 
ment. These demi-voltes have been ascribed by many 
Germans to the strong personal influence of the Emperor 
on the nation's foreign poHcy ; but many of the failures 
of the German diplomatic service both at home and 
abroad were to be charged to the feudal organization 
of the department, which reserved the higher posts for 
the vigorous but self-willed aristocracy. In part these 
failures were most certainly due to the sturdy independ- 
ence of German character, which cannot substitute 
clever subterfuge for brutal frankness and which often 
seems incapable of successful diplomatic intrigue. It is 
unfortunate that so many German statesmen have 
sought to model their conduct after Bismarck, who, 
like Robert Guiscard, was a combination of lion and 
serpent, masking under a sturdy Teutonic frankness 
of approach a rare capacity for the subterranean methods 
of diplomacy and possessing a real gift of second sight 
in his ability to penetrate the moves and motives of his 
opponents. The statesmen that followed him retained 
Bismarck's bluster without the clever strategy by which 
the Iron Chancellor outflanked his opponents. Instead 
of a poHcy, they advanced many and often self-contra- 
dictory policies, and on several occasions during the 
Morocco crises showed themselves sadly lacking before 
the smooth finesse of the French ambassadors or the 
far-reaching selfish statesmanship of the British diplo- 
mats. That the possession of the finer diplomatic 
qualities is not inconsistent with German character was 
illustrated by the record of the late Freiherr Marschall 
von Bieberstein, transferred in the spring of 191 2 from 



EXPANSION AND AMBITIONS 77 

the ambassador's post at Constantinople to that of 
London (cf. page 68). In nearly a score of years at 
the Turkish capital this sturdy Swabian aristocrat 
continually strengthened the position of Germany with 
the Porte, holding by his frankness and cleverness the 
respect of friend and foe, outflanking English, French 
and Russian manoeuvres and inoculating the Young Turk 
leaders of 1908, some of whom had spent years of exile 
in Paris and London, with the same friendship for Ger- 
many which had been a steady tradition of the old 
despot Abdul Hamid. 

Baron Marschall was an ultra-Conservative and had 
been a leader many years before of the Conservative 
group in the Baden Chamber. However, an ultra- 
Conservative from Baden or any other one of the South 
German states is almost a Liberal as compared with the 
Prussian members of the feudal class, with their rigid 
feeling of caste and their intolerance of anything which 
scents even faintly of popular government. This class, 
standing knee-deep in military and feudal traditions, 
seeks its political ideals in the Prussia of the days of the 
Reaction rather than in the Germany of the present day, 
with its swift pulsing industrial life and far-flung com- 
merce. Unfortunately for Germany's international in- 
terests, this class, which stands so close to the imperial 
administration, has furnished by far the larger part of 
Germany's diplomatic representatives. 

German diplomacy has blunders enough on its shoulders, 
but the German people themselves were largely respon- 
sible for the "sabre rattling" which became associated 
with Germany's entry into every international crisis. 
All — diplomats, emperor and people — seemed to have 
something of the uncertain attitude of the parvenu who 
is not just sure of his ground. The new power had 
grown too quickly to give either rulers or people the 
poise and self-confidence possessed by those nations 
which had longer played a leading role in the inter- 



78 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

national drama. This explains the lack of self-restraint 
and the mixture of hesitation and bravado so marked 
during the Morocco affair and the Balkan wars, not 
merely in the more chauvinistic organs and the misin- 
formed provincial journals, but even in such dignified 
pubUcations as the Kolnische Zeitung or the Milnchner 
I Allgemeine Zeitung. The trouble lay in the exaggerated 
/ self-consciousness which developed throughout all classes 
in Germany during the entire period which lay between 
the two wars. The easy conquest over France had 
fostered the idea that power is all that counts in the 
world of nations, and the phenomenal growth of Ger- 
many's trade and industry and the overwhelming suc- 
cess due to her educational accomplishments, especially 
in the technical field, inflated national consciousness to 
the point of egotism. Our fathers were wont to com- 
plain of British superiority of manner : the present 
generation could with justice complain of German 
bumptiousness. Uninterrupted success and prosperity 
bore the same fruit as in the days when " Jeshurun waxed 
fat and kicked." The German knew that his nation 
had the best military system in the world; he 
was fully aware that his efficient elementary schools, 
his industrial and technical schools, his industrial 
and commercial organization and especially the won- 
derful dovetailing of industry and commerce with 
higher education had put the Fatherland in front of 
the nations of the world as regards the efficiency of 
its units; while a remarkable sense of discipline and 
subordination, begotten of the German character and 
developed through centuries of efficient schooling, 
made it possible to forge these units into a national 
machine of rare efficiency. The German felt and knew 
all of this and rejoiced therein until he developed an 
egotism which blinded him in a measure to his own 
national weaknesses and to the strong sides of his neigh- 
bors. He grew to regard it as a matter of course that the 



EXPANSION AND AMBITIONS 79 

Frenchman was decadent, the Italian lazy and corrupt 
and the Russian an ignorant barbarian ; and he finally 
came to the point where the British empire was an 
insult to his own powers. He loved to point out the 
mistakes of the administration in Egypt and India 
and to ridicule the British army, made up, not like the 
German army, of "a people in arms," but of "hirelings" 
who rented their fighting abilities. His journals con- 
stantly pictured the British citizen as a tradesman-soul 
without love of honor and devotion to Fatherland, and 
held up to their readers the monstrous fabric of the 
British empire as an anachronism. A consideration of 
his own efficient methods convinced the average Ger- 
man that he was a better teacher, trainer and adminis- 
trator than the Briton, who Hved in degenerate ease on 
a capital gathered at a time when England had no com- 
petitors. Paired with this confidence in himself there 
went a blind confidence in the general staff and all 
the powers of his central administration and an exu- 
berant optimism as to the nation's power to meet any 
crisis. 

The fact is that in the international family Germany 
was still a youth, and its youthful expressions of jin- 
goism sounded often Hke our own Western bumptious- 
ness in the salad days of the republic. Thus the seizure 
of Kiao Chau in 1897 and the expedition against the 
Chinese Boxers in 1900 were accompanied by an ex- 
plosion of national enthusiasm as if the imperial eagle 
had already spread its claws over the Far East ; and the 
spectacular visit of the Emperor to Tangier in 1905 
led to an outburst of jubilation which could hardly have 
been exceeded if Germany had already successfully 
annexed the southern half of Morocco. This bounding 
optimism, at once a characteristic of youth and of 
German romanticism, led to correspondingly unjustifi- 
able fits of depression. Thus after the Morocco affair 
the bitterest criticism was directed against the govern- 



8o THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

ment for not fulfilling hopes which ought never to have 
been entertained. 

Aside from these exhibitions of political immaturity, 
often taking the form of a dangerous chauvinism, Ger- 
many certainly owed the world no apology for her mili- 
tary preparations or expansive impulses. Whatever 
verdict historians may finally reach as to the causes of 
the European war of 1914, it is clear enough that after 
1 87 1 Germany had no choice save to keep her matches 
burning, and that if she was to defend her existence as 
a nation, she must maintain a powerful army and con- 
stantly increase its efl&ciency. Without attempting to 
justify the moves of German diplomats or the bluster 
of German journals, it must also be conceded that the 
nation had ample reason for the building of a strong 
fleet, since a glance at the figures showing the German 
movement of population in the four decades after the 
Empire came into existence proves that it was no mere 
"land hunger" that provided the nation's expansive 
power. The causes were in no sense political ones, but 
the outcome of stern social and economic forces. While 
in the period 1876 to 191 1 the nation's birthrate fell ^^ 
per cent, a much more rapid fall being registered in the 
large cities and industrial centres, this loss was more than 
compensated by a steady decrease in the deathrate as 
a result of improved social conditions, such as old age 
pensions, accident insurance, sick insurance, sanitary 
progress and the strenuous efforts on the part of the 
governments and private associations to reduce the 
mortality rate of infants. At the time the nations of 
Europe went to war in 1914, the prospective surplus 
of births over deaths in Germany was close to 850,000 
per year and as has been stated, statisticians predicted 
with confidence that by 1925 the population of the 
Fatherland would be well over eighty millions. Even 
at this figure the ratio to the square mile of the entire 
territory would be smaller than that of Belgium or 



EXPANSION AND AMBITIONS 8i 

England and even less than that then existing for the 
province of Westphalia.' 

If this enormous growth was to be maintained, the 
additional mouths must be fed at home, or they must 
emigrate. The colonies which Germany possessed were 
not adapted either in climate or economic conditions to 
accommodate a large number of immigrants, nor did it 
seem that they would be able to do so for many years to 
come. Emigration to America, however, or to any one 
of the British possessions meant of course that the 
emigrant was lost as a political dependent to the Father- 
land, and that he soon ceased to have anything more than 
a very slight culture importance for the German-speak- 
ing world. 

If this fast increasing population was to live within 
the boundary posts of the empire, it must be fed and 
must seek its bread by labor. It was evident to Ger- 
man statesmen that the German people were rapidly 
reaching the position which the British had occupied 
for so many years: they were becoming less and less 
able to feed themselves on homegrown products. Even 

* Population December i, 1905, 60,641,489; December i, 1910, 
64,925,995 ; the increase of population from 1871 to 1910 was 58.1 
per cent, or from 75.9 to 120 per square kilometer. The large cities 
and industrial districts showed of course a much larger growth : thus 
Berlin grew 106 per cent, the kingdom of Saxony 88 per cent, the Rhine- 
land 99 per cent and the province of Westphalia 132 per cent. The 
average annual movement of population per 1000 in the decades since 
the foundation of the Empire was as follows : 

1871-1880 

Birthrate 40-7S 

Excess of births over deaths . 11.9 

In the decade 1901-10 there was a decrease in infant mortaUty from 
20.7 to 16.2 per annum. The maximum excess of births over deaths 
was reached in 1902 (15.6 per 1000) ; after that the decline in the birth- 
rate became so sharp as to alarm German national economists, bring- 
ing the rate of excess for the years 1911-13 to a point below the average 
for any decade since 1871. Even at this Germany still showed an ex- 
cess of births over deaths greater than any first class power except 
Russia. The estimated population June 30, 1914, was 67,812,000. 

G 



I88I-1890 


I89I-I900 


1901-1910 


38.2 


37-3 


33-9 


II.7 


13-9 


14-3 



82 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

with the most careful fostering of agriculture by pro- 
tective measures, by the recovery of waste land and the 
improvement of the means of production, by the es- 
tabUshment of land banks and state assistance in the 
colonization of small farmers, the importation of bread- 
stuffs mounted steadily from year to year. In the period 
1895 to 1905, while the population of Germany increased 
16 per cent, all of this fostering aid to agriculture availed 
to increase the production of the bread grains, wheat 
and rye, only 8 per cent. It is plain that Germany, 
shut in as she was between neighbors whose hostihty 
was only too easily aroused, had exactly the same interest 
in keeping her harbors open for the purpose of feeding 
her people as England had. 

The eight hundred thousand to one million new mouths 
which were to be fed each year must be fed by labor. 
The host of new Germans could not find employment in 
agriculture. In spite of all efforts to the contrary, the 
number of persons dependent on agriculture, including 
forestry, diminished in the period between the vocational 
census of 1895 ^^^ ^^^^ ^^ 19^7 from 35.8 to 28.6 per 
cent of the whole population.^ The entire future of 
the nation lay in the growth and development of its 
industries, in retaining its old markets and finding new 
ones, and thus the Emperor's words, "Our future Hes 
on the water," came home to thinking Germans with 
terrific force. The Fatherland must be able to insure 
an open door for its products and an open road for such 
raw material as could not be found at home. It must 
be able to protect the capital and hves of its children 
from the greed of foreign officials, and it must be able to 
give force to a fair interpretation of trade agreements 
and to afford full backing to its rapidly growing merchant 
marine in every corner of the world where misrule or 

^ In the same period the percentage of the total population dependent 
on manufacturing and mining increased from 35.1 to 42.5, while the 
number dependent on trade and transportation grew from 9.9 to 13.3. 



EXPANSION AND AMBITIONS 83 

jealous trade rivals might bar the way. The future of 
Germany depended on peace ; but unfortunately at the . 
present stage of civiHzation peace can be secured for a 
great power only by submission to the stronger or by 
the ability to defend itself sturdily. ''We Germans," 
said Bismarck, "must be either hammer or anvil." 
Spoken of the nation's situation in the centre of Europe 
between hostile powers, it was no less true in the world 
overseas, where conflicting pohtical interests and hostile 
trade rivals stand ever ready to prey upon him who is 
not ready to defend himself. 

The Germans had become convinced that their life 
interests demanded the building and maintenance of a 
strong fleet. But a fleet without coaHng depots and 
wireless stations is useless for the protection of overseas 
interests in case of war with any nation that does possess 
these assets. It was clearly foreseen that without 
them England would speedily whip German commerce 
from the seas, as actually happened immediately after 
the declaration of war in August 19 14. It is no wonder 
then that Germany sought long and eagerly for suitable 
naval bases on the various highways of commerce. 
It was the ambition to secure just such a point on the 
west coast of Morocco as much as any desire for terri- 
torial expansion in the Moorish kingdom that drove 
the government to its aggressive policy between 1904 
and 191 1 . The failure of this policy the Gerrnans charged 
with justice to England's reckoning, and it was one of a 
long list of checks which they wrote upon the British 
score. National feeling boiled at the thought that the 
British octopus, secure in the possession of numerous 
strategic points on the African and Asiatic coasts, 
should regard the ocean ways that encircle these con- 
tinents as her own private waters and be able to block 
Germany's moves to the acquisition of any commercial 
stepping-stone which might later be converted into a 
station of war. . 



84 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

If the political expansion of Germany in Africa and 
the Far East had reached a point where it must halt 
before the British "Thus far and no farther ! " any move- 
ment toward acquiring a foothold in America was as 
effectually checked by the Monroe doctrine. It seemed 
indeed that German patriots must resign their desire 
for colonies where the constantly growing population 
might find an outlet without being lost entirely to the 
German name and culture. The more gratifying it 
was, then, that the question of emigration had ceased 
to be a pressing one. The best blood of Germany no 
longer went to spend itself in building up English 
nations, for with the growth of German industries during 
the decades following 1890 the economic forces which 
drove young Germans away from the Fatherland ceased 
to exist. A comparison of the figures after 1893 shows 
how this decrease in emigration went hand in hand with 
the growth of industry, until before the beginning of 
the present century the stream of German youth 
flowing outward through the ports trickled so slowly 
that the loss was more than made up by Slavic immi- 
grants whom the industrial progress of Germany was 
drawing into the Eastern marches.^ It was naturally 
a source of pride to German patriots that they had 
ceased to export men and women, and were now ex- 
porting the manufactured products which enabled 
them to feed and clothe their increased population at 
home. In 1908, and again in 191 1 , the writer talked with 
people in various parts of Germany regarding opportuni- 
ties in America, and met in place of the old romantic 
longing for the land of unlimited possibiKties, always the 
same answer: "We are better off here! We are 
quite contented ; America doesn't mean to us what it 

* For each 1000 persons there emigrated in 1893, 1.76; in 1903, 
.62 ; in 1913 less than .39. The total emigration for the year last named 
was but 25,843. Since the middle nineties Germany has become an 
" immigrant country." 



EXPANSION AND AMBITIONS 85 

once did." The causes assigned for this in some cases 
reflected sharply on the flaws in our government and 
especially on our apparent helplessness in solving the 
problems of sound banking, adequate control of great 
industry and honest municipal government, but beneath 
it all lay a great confidence in the industrial future of 
Germany and in the growth of a liberal spirit in gov- 
ernment, without which no real patriotism can exist in 
a civihzed modern state. Outside of the United States 
and the British possessions, the greatest number of Ger- 
mans had found their way to Brazil and Argentina, 
where in the midst of a Romance people they main- 
tained and bid fair to maintain forever their language 
and national culture. 

Unfortunately these Germans were lost to the empire 
politically, nor had Germany been able to acquire 
colonies where the cKmate and other physical conditions 
were favorable to the development of a large population 
of German stock. The nation naturally entered the 
race for colonies late. Not until 1879 did Germany 
first break into the group of colonial powers, and then 
only mildly through the acquisition of a marine station 
in the Samoan Islands. Very gradually and in the 
face of the bitter opposition of the Conservative and 
Radical-Liberal forces the colonial idea took root and 
grew. In 1884 considerable possessions were brought 
under the protection of the black-white-red banner in 
the Togo and Kamerun districts of western Africa and 
a vast tract in southwest Africa. Hamburg merchants 
had led the way in Samoa and West Africa; in 1885 
Karl Peters, a rough and ready explorer with the soul 
of a Cortez, finally brought the East African district 
under a German protectorate. At the same time a vig- 
orous expansion went on in the South Seas, where in 1884 a 
German protectorate was extended over the northeastern 
part of New Guinea, — later baptized as Kaiser Wilhehn's 
Land, — and the neighboring Bismarck Archipelago, to 



86 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

which were soon added the Marshall Islands and a part 
of the Solomon group. Finally, by a purchase-treaty 
with Spain in 1899, the Carolines were brought under 
the empire's South Sea Protectorate. 

Bismarck and the men of the ''old course" entered 
upon the acquisition of colonies with much hesitation. 
They had won their spurs and celebrated their triumphs 
in a Europe which was still the Europe of the Congress of 
Vienna, and especially after the Berlin Congress of 
1878 German diplomats had no desire to add further 
to the complications which foreboded through the 
renaissance of France and the aggressiveness of Russia. 
The commerce of Germany could not, however, be held 
in leash ; the lustily growing national spirit followed, 
and Bismarck was carried along in spite of himself. 
His intention was to establish in the colonies the rule 
of the merchant rather than the despotism of the bureau- 
crat. Unfortunately this was not done, and the first 
thirty years of German colonial history left a record of 
failure through a lack of commercial initiative on the 
part of German business men and an unfortunate stingi- 
ness in the treatment of the colonies by the Reichstag. 
The immense stretches of western and southwestern 
Africa, peopled by a savage and freedom-loving people, 
like the Hereros in Southwest Africa, were an excellent 
though painful school of experience for German admin- 
istration and legislation. The mechanical transference 
of the Prussian bureaucratic system to Damara Land 
and to the equatorial villages of East Africa led to bloody 
insurrections, which in 1904-07 threatened the entire 
future of the Southwest African colony. The lack of 
experience in administration and organization in the col- 
onies was matched by a lack of legislative experience at 
home : the old Bismarckian prejudice against all overseas 
adventures descended to the "little Germans" of cer- 
tain Radical groups and to the Social Democrats. It 
was not that Germans lacked the gift for colonization : 



EXPANSION AND AMBITIONS 87 

German historians complain bitterly that the children of 
the Fatherland have formed the KuUurdiinger, — have 
fertilized civiHzation, — for the whole world overseas. 
It is true that Germany's colonies did not come directly 
as the result of trade or settlement; but it must be 
noted that England's colonies in the torrid zone did not 
come that way either, but were the outcome of a desire 
to anticipate trade and especially to block the advance 
of the Romance peoples. But England's colonial ad- 
ministration is the result of centuries of apprentice- 
ship. Out of a wealth of experience with all sorts of 
dependent peoples she evolved the system which hides 
a firm control under the appearance of self-government, 
the mailed fist under the silken glove,"a system that 
finds its best illustration in the administration of India. 

The Germans had had no such experience. The 
government at home was a bureaucracy, for which the 
model had always been the Prussian system, developed 
under a series of great drill masters since the Great 
Elector. Ofl&cials trained in the iron ideals of the 
Prussian school were transferred to the colonies and 
called on to face conditions which called for an original- 
ity and adaptability that the military system at home 
had given them no opportunity to develop. In this 
difficult position they were further hampered by a lack 
of understanding of conditions by their superiors at 
home and the narrow parsimony on the part of the Reichs- 
tag. No policy could be less adapted for dealing with 
the children of nature in the Cameroons and Damara 
Land and East Africa; and the blood and treasure 
which had to be expended in Africa in the first decade 
of the twentieth century purchased very high-priced 
experience. 

This experience, however, slowly educated the in- 
dividual German to a sense of the responsibilities of 
overseas dominion. Once thoroughly awakened in a 
small circle of ardent patriots, the interest in the colonies 



88 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

was sytematically spread by those methodical and 
thorough, if somewhat pedantic, means so characteristic 
of the German nature. The Colonial Society, founded 
in 1882, by its large membership ^ and numerous publica- 
tions, by the lectures and addresses given under its 
auspices and by the unique Colonial Museum in Berlin, 
did much to educate Germans to a broader view of 
colonial expansion. Every step of progress was taken 
only after a fight with the spirit of ignorance and prej- 
udice in colonial matters, which was the natural result 
of Germany's previous isolation from all overseas 
affairs. Emperor William took the lead, bringing with 
him the active support of the higher aristocracy; little 
by little even the Bavarian and Swabian shopkeeper and 
the East Prussian landholder began to raise their eyes 
to the field of Germany's future beyond the confines of 
Central Europe. In spite of the "little Germans" and 
the reckless rhodomontades of the Pan-Germans, the 
wave of enthusiasm for political expansion beyond the 
seas to keep pace with Germany's industrial growth rose 
higher and higher. A natural development was the 
building of the fleet, so carefully fostered and directed by 
the Emperor and his advisers, which soon infused into 
the nation's public life a spirit of hopefulness and en- 
thusiasm for national interests overseas which no bun- 
gling diplomats and no disappointments could ever 
halt. A strong evidence of the vital interest of Germany 
in world affairs was to be found in the books and pam- 
phlets treating of some phase of the Fatherland's interests 
beyond the seas, which crowded the bookshops in ever 
increasing numbers. In 1900, when German troops 
were sent to China under Count Waldersee to assist in the 
suppression of the Boxer outbreak, there appeared a 
perfect flood of literature bearing on the expedition; 
and in every periodical of metropolis or village the 
wondering burgher could read the details of the Father- 
^ It had in 191 2 an enrolment of 41,000 subscribing members. 



EXPANSION AND AMBITIONS 89 

land's cooperation in the distant East, from the Em- 
peror's ringing valedictory to Count Waldersee down to 
the last detail of the equipment of the individual 
soldier. In 1910 and 191 1 South Morocco was the sub- 
ject of numerous pamphlets, containing excellent maps 
and registering all sorts of valuable information, col- 
lected and sifted for popular consumption. 

This longing for political influence overseas, this 
ardent desire to participate in the government of non- 
Caucasian races and to see the standard of the nation 
float where German industry and commerce were con- 
stantly winning fresh laurels in the end completely 
mastered a part of the German people. Consciously 
or unconsciously it came to dominate the thoughts of 
the younger and more progressive element, rising stronger 
after every crisis Hke the Morocco crisis of 191 1 or 
the Balkan crisis of 1912-13. Scratch a German and 
you will find a romanticist, and it was not only the Pan- 
Germanists, fired by the growth of the nation's naval, 
military and industrial power, who drew an analogy be- 
tween the present empire and the Holy Roman Empire 
of the German Nation under Henry VI or Frederick II, 
when, nominally at least, the imperial eagles held sway 
from the North Sea to the Straits of Malta. 

There was this same mixture of romanticism and prac- 
tical poHtics in the trend of German hopes towards the 
Near East. The lure of the Orient with its unchangeable 
stately picturesqueness threw something of the same 
magic spell over the case-hardened capitalists of Cologne 
and Hamburg as it had over the mediaeval knights who 
followed Frederick Barbarossa over the sands of the 
Cilician desert. Emperor WiUiam himself in the course 
of his travels felt drawn ever and again toward the 
Mediterranean. In 1906 he purchased the beautiful es- 
tate of the late Empress Elizabeth of Austria on the 
island of Corfu, whither he began to make annual visits. 
It was partly this romantic trend of the German mind 



90 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

and partly the growing necessity for securing new avenues 
of outlet for German trade, avenues which could be de- 
fended only by checking Russian plans in the Levant, 
which brought about German friendship for Turkey. 
Abdul Hamid, deposed in 1909, was eager for support 
against Russian pressure from without and Slavic and 
Macedonian unrest within the Balkans, and throughout 
his infamous reign he leaned heavily on German and 
Austrian support. A Prussian officer, the gifted Kolmar 
von der Goltz, was called to Constantinople and re- 
mained from 1883 to 1895 in charge of the reorganization 
of the Turkish army. The Armenian massacres, which 
aroused the conscience of England on numerous occa- 
sions and in 1895 brought intervention from England, 
France and Russia, evoked no feeling of hostility toward 
the Turkish regime from Germany, a curious illustra- 
tion of the way in which selfish poHtical considerations 
may influence the most elementary expressions of human- 
ity. Every German felt that to Germany as well as to 
Austria the maintenance of the status in Turkey was a 
necessity ; and hopes of poHtical and industrial advan- 
tage in Asia Minor blinded the eyes of publicists and 
lamed the arms of humanitarians even during the worst 
days of Abdul Hamid. Thoroughly romantic was the 
visit of Emperor William to Jerusalem in 1898, when 
the German papers delighted to draw parallels with 
the crusading heroes from Godfrey to Frederick II. 
This triumphal progress, which was accompanied by a 
visit to Constantinople, renewed the bonds between 
German and Turk and made the way easier for German 
capital in Asia Minor. Just ten years later, in 1908, 
the Young Turk revolution gave a check to German 
influence in Turkey from which it was slow to recover. 
The Young Turks had been trained in British constitu- 
tional methods, and for years some of them had found 
asylum and financial assistance in London. That their 
opposition to Germany did not assume even more acute 



EXPANSION AND AMBITIONS 91 

form was due largely to the clever diplomacy of Baron 
Marschall von Bieberstein, German ambassador at 
Constantinople after 1897 (cf. page 77), who until his 
departure in 191 1 did much to reorganize and renew 
German influence on the Golden Horn. The ItaUan- 
Turkish war put Germany in a difficult position as be- 
tween her ally and Turkey, but the German papers by 
their suspicious and envious attitude toward Italy did 
much to remove Turkish prejudice. 

The same press and, indeed, the Berlin government, 
too, misjudged Turkey's military strength. Neither ap- 
pears to have doubted on the outbreak of the first 
Balkan War in 191 2 that the Ottoman power would be 
able to defend itself against the Balkan League. Yet, 
when the Turkish debacle came and the Bulgarian 
guns were thundering at the Chatalja defenses of 
Constantinople, Germany could do nothing to aid the 
Turks, since all of her influence was engaged in pro- 
tecting her Austrian ally from the threatened Slavic 
advance. In the following year, however, with the 
first steps toward the rehabihtation of the Turkish 
army, the Sultan's government called in German aid. 
Enver Bey, who had vaulted into power with the crash 
which followed the crumbling of Turkey's defenses, had 
in common with other Young Turk associates implicit 
faith in the German military system. At the call of 
the Sultan's government General Liman von Sanders 
and a large staff of subordinate officers were allowed to 
resign from the German army and enter the Turkish 
service, to begin immediately that thorough and effi- 
cient reorganization which less than two years later 
steeled the Turkish armies to their successful defense of 
the Dardanelles and the hinterland from the Anglo- 
French attack. 

It was, then, as coworker and heir of the Turk that 
the German hoped to find outlet for a part of his 
surplus political and commercial energy. Asia Minor 



92 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

and Mesopotamia, with a heterogeneous and in part 
very energetic population, have great natural resources 
and only wait the touch of European capital to awaken 
to great wealth. Germany had long recognized this, 
and her leverage at the court of the Sultan was early 
brought to bear in the effort to secure a foothold here. 
She regarded this field as pecuKarly hers : hence the 
clever flattery of Abdul Hamid through so many years, 
hence the failure to cooperate with the other European 
powers in their protests against the brutalities of Turkish 
rule and their efforts to assist the Hellenic people in 
Crete and elsewhere, hence the hostile attitude of the 
German press against Italian occupation of the islands 
of the ^gean in 191 2 and the eager championship of the 
Turkish cause by the same papers at the outbreak of 
the first Balkan war. German efforts were crowned 
with preliminary success, and the peaceful penetration 
of Anatolia by German capital went on apace. Abdul 
Hamid granted German capitalists a concession for the 
Anatolian Railway, which was to penetrate the wild 
gorges of the Taurus Mountains and connect Konia with 
Adana near the Gulf of Alexandretta. British capi- 
talists, it is said, would willingly have built this railway 
without guarantee ; the clever German diplomats suc- 
ceeded in obtaining from the Turkish government a 
per-kilometer guarantee for the maintenance of the line, 
which could only by degrees become a paying invest- 
ment. 

By the terms of a later concession the Germans were 
eventually to continue the railway eastward toward 
Mosul and eventually down the valley of the Tigris 
to Bagdad and on to the Persian Gulf. The dormant 
romanticism in the German soul was thoroughly 
awakened by this adventurous undertaking on the 
trail of Alexander the Great. The whole apparatus 
of the Arabian Nights and of Omar Khayyam passed 
before the bewitched eyes of the grandsons of those 



EXPANSION AND AMBITIONS 93 

Germans who had dreamed over Goethe's Westostlicher 
Divan and Bodenstedt's Songs of Mirza Schaffy. With 
this romantic enthusiasm there was blended in the 
practical soul of the modern German a very real ap- 
preciation of the ultimate business value of this con- 
cession and its possible political consequences. The 
whole affair illustrated to some extent, however, the 
timidity of German capital in overseas enterprises. 
The building of the road was delayed by the Young 
Turk revolution of 1908, which boosted British stock 
at Constantinople and made the German position 
difficult; and with the clever conquest of these hin- 
drances, the financial question came to the fore. The 
construction of the road was attended by great engineer- 
ing difficulties and uncertainties, the Turkish govern- 
ment showed its usual vacillating policy, and Hke every 
other semi-official business undertaking in the Ottoman 
Empire, the whole project was surrounded by a nimbus 
of mystery. It was usual in German prints to blame 
British jealousy for failure to enhst foreign capital in 
the enterprise : it would seem, however, that it was 
another case of the lack of boldness and faith in the 
prosecution of overseas undertakings which had caused 
German capital to lose so many races for foreign advan- 
tage ever since the end of the sixteenth century, when 
the Hansa cities of the North Sea neghgently resigned 
to England and Holland their share in the conquest of 
the colonial world.^ 

That in this case the prize was worth struggling for 
and that Germany had already won a great lead in the 

^The first concession for the Anatolian Railway was granted the 
Deutsche Bank in 1888, and the line was completed as far as Konia in 
1896. The extension to Bagdad, with valuable shipping and mining 
rights, was put into the hands of a syndicate of bankers in 1902. The 
work of construction went forward in sections, and by 19 14 nearly all 
of the line between the Taurus mountains and the Euphrates, including 
a branch to Aleppo, had been finished ; but the grades and tunnels 
through the Taurus and by far the greater part of the line east of the 
Euphrates crossing were yet to be built. 



94 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

race toward the basin of the Euphrates and Tigris is 
evidenced by the efforts which were made by her rival 
in this field to checkmate her advances. England years 
ago assured herself of the friendship of the Sheik of 
Koweit and otherwise made her influence strongly felt 
on the Persian Gulf in order to check Russian advances 
to deep water through Persia. After the Japanese war, 
when the growth of Germany's navy began to cause 
uneasiness across the North Sea, England joined forces 
with her old Muscovite enemy and divided Persia into 
spheres of influence, securing for herself the southern 
half. Thus she was braced on a powerful political 
basis to meet the German commercial advance into Meso- 
potamia. British statesmen are accustomed to cal- 
culate a long way in advance, and they have for many 
years looked with yearning toward the time when a 
string of contiguous provinces under English protec- 
torate should connect India with Egypt. It was only 
the fear that Germany might some day steal a Hnk from 
this chain that induced British statesmen to back up 
the Russians in driving out Mr. Morgan Shuster, the 
successful American agent of the Persian treasury in 
191 1, flinging to the winds the traditions of British fair 
play and British Hberality toward a dependent people, 
and it was only the fear of Germany and the desire for 
Russia's friendship at any cost that induced British 
public opinion to back up the action of the government. 
The eventual control over the port terminus of the 
Bagdad Railway and the collision of British and German 
interests on the Persian GuK formed the subject of 
negotiations with the Turkish government after 191 1 
and between London and Berhn in 1913. The spirit 
shown by both sides in these negotiations seemed to 
point, as has been said, to a new era in the relations 
between Great Britain and Germany in which a spirit 
of conciliation should dominate both sides. A prelimi- 
nary agreement was reached in May 1913, by which the 



EXPANSION AND AMBITIONS 95 

German right to financial and economic control of the 
line as far as Bagdad was assured. Between Bagdad 
and Bassora the Hne was to be internationalized, Great 
Britain and Germany each having representatives on 
the governing board. Bassora is, however, not a deep- 
water terminus; and by her arrangement with the 
Sheik of Koweit, Great Britain reserved to herself the 
right to control the line to the port on the Persian 
Gulf.^ The German public received the announcement 
of this agreement with mixed feelings, although it was 
generally conceded that Great Britain had shown a 
fair spirit of compromise. As yet unregulated was the 
important question as to which of the two nations 
should supply capital and enterprise for doing in the 
valley of the Euphrates what Great Britain has done in 
the valley of the Nile, since the rivers of Mesopotamia 
need only the restraining hand of modern science to 
make their valleys blossom as the rose. 

The contrast between Germany's commercial and po- 
litical position outside of Europe was a matter that 
riveted the attention of German patriots more and more 
as the passing years of the twentieth century brought 
ever greater industrial success. They saw their country 
grown by leaps and bounds until it was the second ex- 
porting nation of the world and the second in the carry- 
ing trade. They told themselves with justice that this 
had not been accomplished by treading under foot the 
rights of any people, but in the face of a more or less 
hostile world by patient labor, high technical training 
and self-denial. They saw themselves the object of 
suspicion on the part of all of the great powers except 
Austria, as they firmly believed for no other cause than 
the legitimate growth of German population and trade. 
In the days of their power they were obliged to look on 
while the Mediterranean lands were divided out among 
their rivals, while the utmost efforts of German states- 

^ The distance from Bassora (Basra) to the port at Koweit is 85 miles. 



96 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

men could secure for the Fatherland nothing more than 
savage stretches of equatorial Africa. Their merchant 
fleet carried aloft almost solely the pennants of British 
and American lands, and their battle fleets in girdling 
the earth must fill their bunkers and file their cable- 
/ grams almost entirely under foreign guns. And when 
they joined in the predatory race for the control of 
minor peoples, they saw themselves branded as dis- 
turbers of the peace. No proud nation can endure to 
be told that its province is science, literature and philos- 
ophy, and not government, and that its over-production 
in sons and daughters must enlist their abilities under 
foreign flags, where success can be bought only by the 
surrender of native language and culture. And if one 
argued that the Scandinavian lands and Mediterranean 
powers and other nations proud of their independence 
are content to carry on their commerce and prosper 
regardless of the fact that England rules the seas, the 
German would answer that his position and responsibil- 
ities in the world had grown to be such that he could 
not do business overseas on England's sufferance, but 
on the contrary they gave him full as good a right to 
sea rule as England could claim. The desire for power, 
it must be admitted, is as essential a part of an ambitious 
nation as of an ambitious man. Much has been said 
and written of the philosophical theories which were 
supposed to lie at the bottom of Germany's ambitions, 
and the names of the historian Treitschke and the 
philosopher Nietzsche have been flung about, as though 
the impulse to power, felt alike by German manufacturer 
and tradesman, landholder and artisan, financier and 
statesman and soldier, were based on some abstract 
theory of the rights of the state and the morals of con- 
quest ; and much has been said of Pan- Germanism, as 
though a comparatively small group of noisy theorists 
could fill a nation of peace-loving, hard-working builders 
with a devouring lust of conquest. As a matter of 



EXPANSION AND AMBITIONS 97 

f 
/ fact, what foreign critics have often called German 

militarism and Pan- Germanism is but an exceedingly 
primitive impulse, found in every vigorous nation as 
well as every vigorous individual : the determination to 
be independent and to expand the circumference of rule 
as his powers permit. 

In view of all of this, one can appreciate why the 
question of army and navy armament took with the 
passing years such deep hold, not merely upon the so- 
called ruling classes, but upon the middle and lower 
classes as well. In the Reichstag of 191 2 only the So- 
cial Democratic members and the anti-national groups 
voted against the increases in the army and navy, and 
in 1913, despite some perfunctory Socialist opposition, 
practically the whole nation welcomed the Defense 
Bill, with its tremendous sacrifices, as insurance that the 
Fatherland would be permitted to hold what had been 
won and look with hopeful eyes to the future. Indeed, 
even the most prosaic of burghers in his village shop in 
Thuringia or Swabia began to dream of fleets and con- 
quests overseas. The enthusiasm which his father had 
felt for a Germany at last united, the twentieth century 
German felt in his hours of romantic dreaming for a 
Germany as mistress of the seas and arbiter of the 
nations. This enthusiasm had its ebbs as well as its 
floods, but the floods rose higher each time. It had 
gradually invaded and gripped all classes in the empire, 
and began to make of the German a hardened and 
seasoned cosmopolitan in the British sense, a cosmopoli- 
tan whose realism was warmed by a deep romantic 
enthusiasm for Germany's glory. It had gradually 
transformed the Philistine burgher of the eighties, 
who could not raise his eyes above the narrow horizon 
of central Europe, into a citizen of the world. 



PART II 
THE EMPIRE AT HOME 



CHAPTER V 

Personal Government and Parliamentary 
Rule 

The German empire has the advantage or disadvan- 
tage of working under a written constitution. This 
constitution can be amended by vote of the two organs 
of legislation, the Bundesrat, the Federal Council, and 
the Reichstag, the Imperial Diet, with the approval 
of the Emperor. Bismarck, who in 1871 practically 
took over the constitution of the North German Con- 
federation for the newly born empire, had sought in 
that instrument to create a balance between the Em- 
peror, the dynasties and the people which should insure 
to each of the three a proper share in government. It 
must not be forgotten that the new German constitution 
emerged from two decades of sharp reaction against 
liberalism in government, nor that universal suffrage, 
upon which the choice of the popular federal assembly 
rests, was not won through revolutionary agitation on 
the part of the representatives of the people, but came 
as a free gift from the feudalistic monarch of Prussia 
through his autocratic minister at a time when monarch 
and minister had by a violent interpretation of the 
Prussian bill of rights demonstrated the power of 
autocracy to rule in Prussia in defiance of an over- 
whelming popular majority. William I and Bismarck 
reorganized the army and prepared for the victory over 
Austria in spite of the opposition of a Liberal majority 
in the Prussian Diet : while riding on the crest of the 
wave of victory over the Habsburg monarchy the 



I02 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

Prussian dynasty then in 1867 presented to the peoples 
of the North German Confederation, some of which 
had just been brought under Prussian rule without 
their consent, a federal constitution which guaranteed 
to every male over twenty-five years of age a share in 
the government through the right to vote for represen- 
tatives in the new federal assembly. 

Bismarck once called universal suffrage "the most 
powerful ingredient known to Uberty mongers." That 
the adoption of the principle into the German federal 
constitution was one of his cleverest strokes, no one can 
deny. His action did not proceed from any sympathy 
with popular government, but was, as he called it, "a 
weapon in the war for German unity." The chief 
opposition to this unity had always lain in the mutual 
jealousies of the various German dynasties, some of 
whom, like the ruling families of Hanover and Hesse- 
Cassel, had enjoyed only a very apathetic allegiance 
and no affection whatever from their subjects. The 
allegiance to the ideal of German unity was, however, 
exceedingly strong, and it was the passionate devotion 
to this ideal which Bismarck used to balance off dynastic 
jealousies. To insure union, he gave liberty ; as against 
the bickerings of petty princes he called into being an 
untrammelled electorate of all Germans, eager for 
sacrifice for German unity, many of them burning with 
patriotism for the Prussian house, which henceforth 
was to personify this ideal. And when after the war 
with France the South German peoples, accustomed for 
more than half a century to more liberal constitutions, 
entered the new empire, the guarantee of universal 
suffrage with a secret ballot became more than ever 
necessary as a weapon against centrifugal tendencies. 

Bismarck had too many of the prejudices of a Prus- 
sian rural aristocrat to feel any sympathy with popular 
government, and he was as careful to preserve the rights 
of the dynasties as to curb their selfishness. The 



GOVERNMENT AND PARLIAMENTARY RULE 103 

Bundesrat of sixty-one members, representing the 
dynasties of the various states, prepares legislation 
under the guidance of a ministry appointed by the 
Emperor, shapes its measures in secret session and pre- 
sents the result to the Reichstag for acceptance or re- 
jection. Theoretically the lower house can and occa- 
sionally does, originate legislation but it is not the sort 
of legislation that makes up government policy. The 
Prussian aristocracy which made the German constitu- 
tion did not intend to establish parliamentary govern- 
ment in the empire. All measures relating to the 
national defenses, all questions of international policy, 
all matters of taxation and administration issue full 
grown from the Bundesrat. The Reichstag may accept 
or reject them, it may criticise or amend them in com- 
mittee, or it may force upon the government a change of 
policy by refusing to accept in any form the proposed 
measure. Or the government may dissolve the popular 
house and appeal to the country, presenting to the new 
Diet, which must be elected and take its seat within 
three months, such a program as seems Hkely to find 
passage. Any legislation originating in the Reichstag 
may be brought before the Bundesrat, but there is no 
means of compelling the ministry to do this, and there 
is of course no possibility that the popular assembly 
will take anything Hke unanimous action on any subject. 
When, however, the government's measures emerge 
from behind the locked doors of the dynastic chamber, 
they are presented as the collective and unanimous 
policy of Germany's rulers. As compared with the 
American system of parliamentary government with an 
executive veto, the German government is a dynastic 
government with a parhamentary veto ; as compared 
with the British system of parliamentary rule through a 
responsible ministry, the German system provides for 
parliamentary acquiescence in legislation prepared by 
ministers responsible to the sovereign alone. 



I04 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

The federal ministry is at once federal-imperial and 
Prussian, the imperial chancellor being always the 
Prussian prime minister, hence doubly responsible to 
the Emperor, who is, under the terms of the federal 
constitution, likewise the king of Prussia. The 397 
representatives of the people in the Reichstag cannot 
therefore bring the ministry to a fall. They may put 
an end to their own legislative careers by obdurate 
opposition to the will of the crown, but they cannot force 
the sovereign to choose a new ministry in line with the 
wishes of the Reichstag, still less can they compel the 
Bundesrat to accept measures agreeable to the popular 
assembly, except indirectly through such a series of 
refusals to cooperate in government as seriously to 
hamper legislation. Although one or two events of 
this kind in the history of the German constitution will 
appear below, it may be noted here that through the 
clever management of parties and the astute balancing 
off of interests in the Reichstag there has never yet come 
about a serious crisis where a popular revolt against the 
dynastic will has resulted in a dangerous deadlock. 

That the Germans have never yet had to force to a 
definite conclusion the question as to which of the 
powers of government, the dynastic or the popular, 
is superior, has been due, along with the cleverness of the 
ministry in working the levers of class and economic 
rivalry, to the personality of the sovereigns who have 
ruled over the new empire. In the early sixties Bismarck 
administered a despotic government in Prussia in the 
name of the sovereign notwithstanding bitter opposition 
from the Liberal Diet, claiming that in the deadlock 
which had resulted between the two powers of govern- 
ment, monarch and people, the monarch was justified in 
governing until the deadlock should end. English 
liberalism was still an ideal among the Prussian people, 
and the attitude of the middle classes at that time tow- 
ard King William was one of indifference, if not of 



GOVERNMENT AND PARLIAMENTARY RULE 105 

hostility. But history justified Bismarck's somewhat 
cynical remark: "Germany does not look for its 
salvation to Prussia's liberalism but to Prussia's 
power!" With the success of Prussia's military policy 
in the wars with Austria and France, the new-made 
Emperor William rode upon a wave of popularity which 
gained force and spread as the old sovereign advanced 
to the venerable age which made him the dean of all 
European monarchs and the most distinguished rep- 
resentative of the monarchical principle. Among the 
great mass of Germans, with their romantic tendency to 
hero-worship, the monarchical idea was tremendously 
strengthened in those years, a movement which was 
furthered by the attractive personality and the tragic 
sufferings of Emperor William's son, Emperor Frede- 
rick. 

When after the hundred days' reign of his father 
William II ascended the throne in 1888, the nation was 
still in the main pulsing with the enthusiasm of 1871 
and still ready for hero-worship. He appealed to the 
patriotic instincts of his people without being able to 
satisfy the affection which had been given so fully to 
his grandfather and father. This is not the place to 
attempt an analysis of the character of William II ex- 
cept in so far as it relates to his attitude toward govern- 
ment. This much must be said, however, that both as 
Emperor and as king of Prussia he did from the begin- 
ning of his reign what he could to hold the scales against 
the advance of parliamentary government, and that it 
was due in part to him that Germany's progress in 
this direction was far slower than it otherwise would have 
been, so slow in fact as to produce a serious dislocation 
in administration. In his political views the Emperor 
showed himself an anachronism, sharing to the full 
those ideas of the divine right of kings which in Eng- 
land departed with the age of the Restoration. In a 
nation which was rushing breathlessly ahead with 



io6 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

industrialism and commercialism and other levelling 
forces, he stood forth as the representative of the 
militaristic-feudalistic spirit, upon which for two can- ^ 
turies the greatness of Prussia had been built up. Joined 
with this mediaeval view of his position, which connects' 
him with his grandfather and still more with his great- 
uncle, Frederick William IV, that "romanticist on the 
throne of the Caesars," he has displayed an impetuous 
temper, a many-sided and tireless energy and a gift for 
forcible and epigrammatic expression. Endowed with 
these vigorous traits, he was unfortunately hampered 
in his development by an education and by surroundings 
of a military and feudalistic sort, without the temper- 
ing influence of trouble or misfortune, and he naturally 
enough developed an egotism which often collided 
violently with the growing self-assertion of German 
citizens. This royal egotism found expression early in 
his reign in the oft-quoted autograph of the Emperor 
written in the Golden Book of Senators in Munich in 
1892 : Suprema lex regis voluntas esto, "Let the sover- 
eign's will be the highest law" ; it showed itself twenty 
years later in his famous remark to the Burgomaster of 
Strasburg, when, irritated by the anti-national agita- 
tion which followed the adoption of the constitution in 
Alsace-Lorraine, the Emperor declared: "I will break 
your constitution into fragments and incorporate you 
as a province of Prussia!" 

It is evident that a man of such strong personality, 
who by his very restlessness and versatility thrust 
himself constantly into the forefront of public questions, 
might become a danger to the royal prerogative. In 
many ways William II has undoubtedly stretched to 
the utmost the power of the crown. His uncompro- 
mising support of the church and the military establish- 
ment, his enthusiasm for the fleet and his bitter opposi- 
tion to the progress of socialism made themselves felt 
as powerful creative forces in interior policy. The 



GOVERNMENT AND PARLIAMENTARY RULE 107 

Emperor wields a control over appointments in the army 
and navy and diplomatic corps, in the judiciary and civil 
administration both in Prussia and the empire little 
short of absolute, whether exercised directly through the 
ministry which he appoints or indirectly through the 
lesser members of the official hierarchy. "No monarch 
in states not absolute monarchies has ever possessed 
such an actual influence as belongs to the Emperor 
to-day," wrote Friedrich Naumann in 1905. That this 
enormous influence was strengthened rather than 
lessened in the decades which followed on the Emperor's 
succession is due to the fact that it was nearly always 
exerted in accordance with the ideas and prejudices of 
the class upon which Prussian and German power was 
built up in the first place, the vigorous landed aris- 
tocracy and other feudalistic elements in the empire. 
Separated from these elements or thrown against this 
powerful conservative group, the personal government 
of the imperial office would soon shrivel in the face of 
parliamentary opposition, for it must be remembered 
that it is not so much personal and individual power 
which the Emperor represents, as opposed to the popular 
will expressed in the Reichstag, as it is the will of the 
conservative aristocracy and sovereign princes centred in 
his person. The imperial prerogative is too closely in- 
terwoven with all of the forces of conservatism in church 
and state to be seriously impaired except through a 
revolution. 

Nevertheless, there is evidence to show that as com- 
pared with his grandfather the character of William II 
has done much damage to the "divinity which doth 
hedge about a king." A monarch who takes himself 
very seriously, who brings his personality into every 
question from that of international politics to art 
criticism, must expose himself to vigorous and often 
bitter criticism from so modern and individualistic a 
people as the Germans. Especially the Social Demo- 



io8 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

cratic speakers and editors, to whom a crowned head is 
of course fair game, found in the acts and works of Wil- 
liam II abundant opportunity for thinly veiled sneers. 
A long list of prosecutions for Use majeste, many of them 
ridiculously trivial, marked the first decade of his reign, 
and showed the inquisitorial methods of the police and 
the sycophancy of the courts in a very unattractive 
hght. 

After the beginning of the new century, however, 
there was a constant improvement in this regard. The 
Emperor profited by one or two humiliating experi- 
ences and grew more reserved in his public utterances ; 
and the German people learned to take the outbursts of 
an impulsive and imaginative character less seriously. 
In 1908 the law covering lese majeste was revised so as 
to do away with the prosecution of harmless and un- 
conscious offenders, reserving the pains of the law only 
for those who should "evilly and with malice afore- 
thought" insult the head of the state, thus dissolving 
the nimbus of comic opera sacro-sanctity which the 
courts and sycophants had woven around the person 
of the Emperor. Unfortunately, however, there was no 
diminution of the sycophancy which seems necessarily 
connected with semi-absolute rule. Already isolated 
from the streams of popular Ufe by his training and by 
the surroundings prescribed by his position, there is 
reason to beUeve, apart from the revelations of Maxi- 
milian Harden in the Zukunft in 1908, that Emperor 
William has always been more or less closely surrounded 
by a group of men thoroughly out of sympathy with 
modern or liberal ideas in government, who have sought 
in every way to insulate him from all currents of popular 
feeling and sympathy. In spite of the strong and many- 
sided personality of William II; in spite of his wide 
interests in the affairs of the world and the absolutely 
unparalleled opportunities which he made for himself 
of almost daily intercourse with philosophers, artists, 



GOVERNMENT AND PARLIAMENTARY RULE 109 

inventors and captains of industry from every part of 
the world, bringing him into touch with the latest 
movements in every field of progress; in spite of his 
travels and his thoroughly modern spirit, he seems to 
have made Kttle progress in the appreciation of de- 
mocracy. The reactionary influences of a military and 
feudal aristocracy and the pliant flattery of a sycophantic 
and ilKberal cHque confirmed the romantic and abso- 
lutistic tendencies of his character and education. He 
who might have been a great popular sovereign, keeping 
step with the march of the German people toward a 
really popular government, has, with all of his abiUties, 
his earnest patriotism and his appreciation of Germany's 
national destiny, never been able to comprehend the 
poUtical aspirations of his people and has steadily 
opposed its progress towards self-government. 

The autocratic power which makes of the German 
government a constitutional but not a parliamentary 
system rests upon a still more autocratic power wielded 
by the Emperor as king of Prussia. "Germany does 
not look to Prussia's liberalism, but to Prussia's power," 
declared Bismarck in 1861, and this power was founded 
by the sword. The unity of Germany was brought 
about in the last instance not by liberal statesmen nor 
ideahstic enthusiasts but through the rude centraliza- 
tion of power in the hands of a succession of virile 
Prussian monarchs. As king of Prussia the Emperor 
stands at the head of the imperial navy, of the entire 
army in war and of a great part of it in peace, and has a 
powerful influence in the Bundesrat. In asserting auto- 
cratic power he is not only carrying out the traditions 
of his own royal house but also those traditions on which 
German unity was founded, upon the principle of force 
and the ruthless suppression of constitutional guaran- 
tees. This is a point which is most difficult for Americans 
and Englishmen to see, looking back as they do upon a 
history of the steady development of parliamentary in- 



no THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

stitutions free and unhindered by foreign pressure. The 
blood and iron which Bismarck prescribed as necessary 
for German unity was no mere rhetorical flourish. It 
is idle now to speculate as to what might have happened 
had liberalism been permitted to develop in Prussia 
as it had begun to develop after the reactionary fifties. 
In the revolution of 1848 it showed itself impotent to 
unite the German peoples, and the only other alterna- 
tive was a bloody struggle, from which the new empire 
emerged as a constitutional but not a parliamentary 
monarchy. 

There are signs, however, that even under William 
II the development toward parliamentary government 
and particularly toward ministerial responsibility to 
the Reichstag has gone forward, with infinite slowness, 
it is true, but with real progress nevertheless. One of 
these signs is to be found in the growing popular im- 
patience with the autocratic speeches which have been 
a characteristic of the reign of William II. In 1893 the 
Emperor, addressing a gathering of higher military 
officers, threatened to dash to pieces the parliamentary 
opposition to the new Army Bill. The speech naturally 
aroused sharp criticism, carefully veiled, in parliamen- 
tary circles. Contrast with that, however, the out- 
burst of indignation which followed the threat of the 
Emperor against the new constitution in Alsace-Lor- 
raine in May 191 2, referred to above (cf. page 106). 
Again the crisis was one which might well call for the 
union of all German patriots behind the sovereign; 
and as a matter of fact no one really believed that the 
Emperor meant his threat to be taken literally ; it was 
nevertheless made the occasion for a tremendous outburst 
against "personal government." Not merely Socialist 
and Radical journals and those Bavarian and Wiirtem- 
berg periodicals which are especially sensitive to Prus- 
sian preponderance, showed their resentment at the 
Emperor's words, but many Liberal papers and not a 



GOVERNMENT AND PARLIAMENTARY RULE iii 

few organs of the Centre and Conservative parties 
took the opportunity of giving a serious warning to 
the sovereign not to overstep constitutional bounds. In 
the Reichstag the incident led to one of those bitter 
debates which became more and more frequent after 
the beginning of the new century, where the dignity 
of the parliamentary issue was lost in the incoherent 
violence of Socialist attacks on the crown. The net 
result of the incident was not so much a call to order of 
the monarch for his violent words as a nation-wide 
declaration that the constitution was above attack. 
Once more the Philistine narrowness of the Social Demo- 
crats prevented a working union of all liberal elements. 
On an earUer occasion there had been in another field 
signs of a growing impatience with autocratic govern- 
ment, this time with somewhat more positive results. 
As the new century advanced, pubUc opinion became 
more and more sensitive with respect to the Emperor's 
attitude toward foreign affairs, where the sovereign 
exercised a more direct influence than is usual in states 
where constitutional government has thrust its roots 
deeper into the soil of national Ufe, and showed the un- 
conscious lack of feeling for popular prejudice which 
seems to be inseparable from the autocratic attitude 
of mind. During the Boer War in 1900 the Emperor 
visited England, where his relations with Queen Vic- 
toria and the royal house had long been a source of 
irritation to German patriots. Again in 1906, when the 
Germ^an press was smarting with a sense of unfulfilled 
ambitions in Morocco, there were many bitter criticisms 
passed on personal government and a manifest tendency 
to make a scapegoat for the failure at the Algeciras 
Conference not merely of Prince Biilow, the Chancellor, 
but of the monarch himself. The most remarkable 
instance of this growing sensitiveness was found in the 
celebrated Daily Telegraph interview of October 28, 
1908. From this interview between the correspondent 



112 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

of the London daily and the Emperor, the account of 
which was published with the latter's consent, the 
German nation was astonished to learn that during the 
Boer War, when every German heart was overflowing 
with enthusiasm for the South African republics battUng 
against England's world power, the Emperor had pre- 
pared a plan of campaign for the British army, had it 
criticised by his general staff and forwarded to England, 
a plan which closely resembled the one. later followed by 
Roberts and Kitchener in destrojdng the power of the 
Boers. Nothing could have aroused greater resent- 
ment than this discovery, and the embitterment tow- 
ard the Emperor was in no wise modified by the fact 
that the interview had by some curious act of stupidity 
received the approval of the Berlin ministry before it 
was published. The blunder of publication, great as it 
was, sank into insignificance before the feeHng of anger 
at the sovereign's absolute independence of national 
feeling. The personality of the ruler acting indepen- 
dently of the will of the nation was felt to call for the 
bitterest resentment, and brought about the nearest 
thing to an anti-dynastic wave since the flickering out 
of the last embers of the revolution of 1848. 

The discussion of the incident in the Reichstag in 
November 1908 brought to expression the ardent long- 
ing of a great many Germans for real parHamentary 
government. Even the tactful and adroit management 
of Billow could not save the sovereign from humilia- 
tion; all the tactlessness and violence of the Social 
Democrats could not break the solidarity of the Liberal 
parties in their demand for parliamentary control of 
foreign affairs. The Chancellor issued on behalf of the 
Emperor a statement, very carefully worded but clear, 
nevertheless, in which the monarch obUged himself 
"to retain constitutional forms," an unmistakable 
recession before the power of public opinion. Out of 
the discussion between Conservatives and Liberals 



GOVERNMENT AND PARLIAMENTARY RULE 113 

came the clear and sharp enunciation of two ideals: 
that of "personal government," backed by all of the 
conservative forces of the nation, and that of parlia- 
mentary government in the British sense, with the crown 
as a mere figurehead. It showed also that while the 
compromise which the German constitution makes 
between the two views of government is as yet un- 
shaken, liberal forces are nevertheless busily at work 
undermining it. 



CHAPTER VI 

The Government and the Parties 

Admirers of the German constitution have often 
called attention to the permanency of German minis- 
tries as compared with those of France and other Con- 
tinental powers. It is true that a system which makes 
the Chancellor and his associates independent of the 
whims of parliaments and the fickleness of the electors 
is assured of greater stability than one which has to reckon 
with the possibility of overthrow through the dissatis- 
faction of legislators. And it is also true that the German 
empire with its girdle of unsjrtnpathetic if not actually 
hostile neighbors could ill afford to risk a governmental 
crisis at a moment when perhaps the international 
situation called for the greatest alertness. France 
gave, both during the Dreyfus and Morocco affairs, an 
awful example of the ills attendant on swapping horses 
while crossing a stream. Bismarck in a noteworthy 
chapter in the second volume of his memoirs holds 
it to be an absolute necessity that a ministry should be 
permitted to remain in power in the face of an occasional 
lack-of-confidence vote or even of persistent opposition 
on the part of an adverse majority. 

But in the zeal of comparing systems one is apt to 
forget how large a part national characteristics play. 
The defenders of the German constitution are obliged 
to confess that in spite of the pop-in-pop-out method 
in vogue in France, since the beginning of the twentieth 
century French foreign policy has moved forward with 
an adroitness and a breadth of view that have been in 

114 



THE GOVERNMENT AND THE PARTIES 115 

no wise diminished by changes in the ministry. The 
success that crowned the efforts of men Hke Delcasse 
and Pichon and Poincare in their dealings with Eng- 
land and Germany and the Balkan states in this period 
'was won in the face of the certainty that failure would re- 
sult in their being driven from power and perhaps public 
hfe. The settling of accounts in the French Chamber 
following on the crises of 1905 and 1911, while conducted 
with the GalHc violence which is so hard for a Teuton to 
understand, was, Hke the British parliamentary "post- 
mortems" of May 191 5 concerning the failures of the 
Asquith government at the beginning of the war, a very 
healthy operation. It is a fair statement that if such a 
calling to account of the ministry could have taken 
place in the German Reichstag in 1906 after the Algeciras 
Conference, the crisis of 191 1 and some of the con- 
sequent shocks and humihations to German pride would 
never have occurred. 

We have seen that in the main the German citizen 
has been satisfied with a system which has found five 
federal ministries sufficient in forty-odd years. Bis- 
marck, Capri vi, Hohenlohe, Biilow and Bethmann- 
Hollweg gave the empire a fairly consistent foreign 
poKcy and secured for the Fatherland fairly good results 
both in bartering with foreign ministries and in the 
conduct of home affairs. With one exception, — • 
Hohenlohe, a son of the Bavarian Palatinate, — all 
have been Prussians of that feudal aristocracy which 
won unity for the German people under the leadership 
of the Hohenzollern kings. While no man from the 
industrial, commercial or strictly intellectual classes 
has attained or could attain to leadership under the 
semi-absolutist system, still no man, whatever his 
prestige, could hold the position of Federal Chancellor 
without a deep knowledge of German character and a 
certain sympathy with the demands of all classes. The 
first three chancellors, indeed, had all played an impor- 



ii6 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

tant part in the foundation of the empire ; Biilow was 
a trained and adroit diplomat of long experience; 
Bethmann-HoUweg, who took the rudder in 1909, a 
lawyer and administrator, a man who had come up 
through all the grades of promotion by force of business 
ability and parliamentary tact. 

Indeed, it may be said that the leader of no ministry 
in modern Europe must satisfy so many and such varied 
demands as the Imperial Chancellor, who is at the same 
time Prussian prime minister. Besides the adminis- 
tration of the empire, he must have the tact to satisfy 
a monarch who is intent on preserving all the traditions 
of Prussian autocracy and he must be a parliamentarian 
adroit enough to hold the balance between the forces of 
conservatism and the rising demands of democracy. 

The parliamentary situation in Germany has offered 
special difficulties. Bismarck once compared the ten- 
dency of latter-day Germans to break up into parties 
with the old separatism of the Middle Ages, when cities, 
villages, abbeys and knights all held directly from the 
empire, with resulting feebleness and defenselessness. 
"I know of no other country," he exclaimed, "where 
national feeling and love for the whole fatherland offer 
so little resistance to the excess of party passion as with 
us." These words, spoken before Bismarck's retirement, 
have been strikingly true in Germany's inner political 
life ever since. There has been a tremendous growth 
in national unity, it is true. The strongest testimony 
to that was given by the unanimity with which the 
increases in the army and navy were voted in May 191 2 
by all parties in the Reichstag except the Socialists, 
such increases as would have cost Bismarck a dissolu- 
tion of the Diet and a bitter electoral fight. With 
the call to arms in 19 14 even the perfunctory opposi- 
tion of the Social Democrats ceased, and the popular 
assembly supported the government with practical 
unanimity in the war measures. But in spite of their 



THE GOVERNMENT AND THE PARTIES 117 

oneness in response to the national call, the jealousy of 
the parties in the Reichstag elected in 191 2 was no less 
and the bitterness between the various groups as in- 
tense as in the days of Eugene Richter and Windthorst. 
An American or Englishman, accustomed to two great 
parties of conservative and Hberal thought, with various 
more or less short-Hved third parties representing 
various phases of industrial unrest, finds it very diffi- 
cult to understand the reason for many of the divisions 
and subdivisions in German politics. We are accus- 
tomed to see all matters that cannot come within 
the wide program of constitutional interpretation settled 
more or less independently of party; in Germany the 
tendency has been to form a new party to further each 
new economic or social theory, and in not a few cases 
new parties have been called into being simply as an 
expression of the opinion of some individual, so that, 
as Bismarck says, "The whole matter is one of Cephas 
and Paul and not of principles." To the division 
between the Liberal and Conservative parties was added 
in the early seventies a Clerical or Centre party, intent 
on advancing policies favored by the Roman CathoKc 
Church. The incorporation of Schleswig-Holstein into 
Prussia brought into the popular assembly a small but 
aggressive Danish group from those duchies; the 
absorption of Hanover by Prussia in 1866 added a 
Guelph party, representing the hopes of a revival of 
the ancient kingdom of Hanover. The growth of the 
Polish question brought in a Polish group, recruited 
mainly from the electors of the Prussian provinces of 
Posen, West Prussia and Silesia, and representing the 
national aspirations of the Poles. These "national" 
groups, whose concern was first of all with inner Prus- 
sian questions, found their way into the Reichstag as 
well as the Prussian Chamber of Deputies, and together 
with the representatives of Alsace-Lorraine for forty 
years formed within the federal popular assembly a small 



ii8 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

but irreconcilable body, particularistic in the extreme 
and hostile to national unity. The situation was further 
complicated by the economic advance of the eighties and 
nineties, not merely through the growth of the Social 
Democrats, the representatives of the proletariat, but 
by the splitting of the old Liberal group on the tariff 
and other economic issues. 

Disagreement, splitting and reorganization have 
formed the history of party progress in modern Germany. 
Thus by his movement toward protection in the late 
seventies Bismarck drove a wedge deep into the old 
Liberal party, dividing it henceforth into two parties 
— the National Liberals, who gravitated toward conserv- 
atism, and the German Radicals (Deutschfreisinnigen) , 
containing the low tariff and more radical group. The 
latter fraction split again in 1893 on the question of 
supporting the mihtary establishment, and there arose 
two Radical groups, — the Freisinnige Vereinigung and 
the Freisinnige Volkspartei, — which later (1907-10) 
coalesced into the Progressive People's Party (Fort- 
schrittliche Volkspartei). Amidst this confusion of per- 
sonahties and cross-issues there was a tendency to 
lose sight of constitutional questions, and the parties 
in the Reichstag, as well as in the popular assemblies of 
the various states, became more and more the represen- 
tatives of narrow economic and religious or social in- 
terests, splitting the political life of the nation into 
innumerable selfish cliques and seriously impeding 
progress toward real parliamentary government. Thus 
the conservative parties tended more and more to rep- 
resent agrarian interests ; the National Liberals, greatly 
reduced in numbers and after the beginning of the cen- 
tury threatened with another split into progressive and 
reactionary elements, came to stand for those industrial 
interests which demanded a strengthening of the national 
power, the open door for trade and the furtherance and 
cheapening of the means of communication; while 



THE GOVERNMENT AND THE PARTIES 119 

the commercial classes, the large and small traders, 
advanced more and more in a radical direction. The 
Radical group, on the other hand, suffered a loss of 
numbers through the growth of the Social Democrats, 
who, beginning their party Hf e with two members in the 
Reichstag of 1871, grew in forty years to a membership 
of no, having attracted to their support many voters 
who did not sympathize with sociahst theories. The 
influence of the party on legislation became great, but 
was exercised indirectly rather than directly. By its 
growth it forced Bismarck to undertake the socialistic 
compulsory insurance laws of the eighties, and it kept 
the eyes of the voters constantly fixed on the necessity 
for advancing sociahstic legislation to keep pace with 
the growth of industry. The presence of the party in 
the Reichstag and in the Prussian Diet was, however, 
a serious handicap in the nation's progress toward parlia- 
mentary, government, since repeatedly through the 
violence of Social Democratic speeches and newspaper 
attacks on the person of the sovereign and nationalist 
ideas the other parties were driven in the direction of 
reaction. Rather than achieve progress fighting shoulder 
to shoulder with the Social Democrats, Liberals and 
Radicals again and again failed to use the favorable 
moment to strike for more Hberal institutions. Rather 
than combine forces. Liberals, Radicals and Socialists 
were content to see the affairs of the nation administered 
by a reactionary and feudalistic minority. 

Splitting and reorganization, narrow particularism 
and selfish economic interest, therefore, produced a 
number of parties in the Imperial Diet, some of them 
so small that the word "fraction" seems a very adequate 
description. In the Reichstag of 191 2, the 397 members 
were divided into fourteen clearly defined parties, each 
having a "program" and each claiming to represent 
more or less important interests. Some of these frac- 
tions had only one or two members ; and there were in 



I20 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

addition four members who found no party program 
to satisfy them and were elected on no platform except 
their own individual theories as to the promotion of the 
public welfare. These varied interests and personal 
ambitions, however, fell into five more or less well- 
defined groups. The shades of difference between the 
various fractions making up these larger groups are 
often scarcely distinguishable, the old breaches which in 
some cases split the fractions having long since healed, 
and occasionally the existence of the "party" is simply 
due to the personal following of certain ambitious men. 
As between the five party groups, however, the differ- 
ences are so marked that they are plain to every one. 
Representing as they have come to do economic in- 
terests as well as constitutional theories, they go widely 
asunder in their demands. By a custom generally 
followed on the Continent, the more conservative groups 
are seated on the right of the chamber, as one faces it 
from the speaker's tribune, the Clerical party in the 
centre, and the liberal groups to the left, the delegates 
becoming more and more radical in the seats to the 
extreme left of the presiding officer. Following this 
arrangement, the groups in the Reichstag may be defined 
as Conservative-Agrarian, Catholic, Liberal-Industrial, 
Radical-Commercial and Socialist-Proletarian.^ 
•\-The Conservative Group is made up of the "German 
or Ultra-Conservatives" (Hochkonservativen) and the 
"Free Conservatives" or "Imperial Party" (Reichs- 
partei). The former is historically the old Prussian 
party of feudal landholders, the latter, while defending 
feudal interests, early accepted and approved the ab- 

*The grouping of parties in the Reichstag is by no means easy, es- 
pecially for the earlier years of the empire, when the lines between 
Liberal and Radical were not clearly drawn and the anti-national 
parties (Guelphs, Alsatians, Poles and Danes) frequently united with 
the Catholic Centre for tactical purposes. The following arrangement 
foUows in the main the Radical publicist Friedrich Naumann and gives 
a fairly complete picture of the political complexion of the Imperial 



THE GOVERNMENT AND THE PARTIES 121 

sorption of Prussia into the German Empire and has 
been marked throughout its history by strongly 
nationalistic tendencies. It has been distinctly less 
reactionary and more inclined to submerge narrowly 
Prussian interests into the interests of the empire. 
These two powerful wings represent the landed inter- 
ests of the Prussian Northeast : Pomerania, East Prus- 
sia and the Old Mark, — the backbone and ribs of the 
Prussian monarchy to-day as in the days of Frederick 
the Great and Stein and Bliicher, — with occasional 
districts in West Prussia, Silesia and Bavaria. Rep- 
resenting the landed interests, the Conservative group 
after the early nineties adopted an anti-semitic policy, 
such as would appeal to the prejudices of money- 
borrowing landlord and peasant, and has for tactical 
political purposes absorbed the small Anti-Semitic 
faction and other groups representing feudal and 
agrarian interests in the Reichstag. It champions of 
course a sturdy resistance to all liberalizing tendencies 
in government administration, and is the sworn defender 

Diet since the formation of the empire, according to the classification 
made above : 





Conserv- 




Anti-na- 
tional 


Liberal- 


Radical- 


Socialist- 


Unat- 
tached 




ative- 
Agrarian 


Catholic 


Indus- 
trial 


Commer- 
cial 


Proleta- 
rian 


I87I 


92 


58 


21 


150 


47 


I 


28 


1874 


54 


91 


33 


152 


SO 


9 


8 


1877 


78 


93 


28 


127 


48 


12 


II 


1878 


"S 


93 


35 


98 


34 


9 


13 


I88I 


78 


98 


43 


45 


114 


12 


7 


1884 


106 


99 


42 


SO 


74 


24 


2 


1887 


122 


98 


32 


99 


32 


II 


3 


1890 


98 


106 


37 


42 


76 


35 


3 


1893 


116 


96 


37 


53 


48 


44 


3 


1898 


103 


102 


33 


47 


SO 


S6 


6 


1903 


90 


100 


31 


5° 


36 


83 


9 


1907 


112 


104 


28 


S6 


SO 


43 


4 


1912 


74 


90 


33 


45 


44 


no 


4 



122 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

of autocratic and military power. Being largely Prus- 
sian in constituency, it has always defended Prussia's 
prestige in federal affairs. In matters of religion it is 
strongly Lutheran and ultra-orthodox. 

The Clerical or Centre party began its existence as 
the representative of Roman Catholic interests with the 
formation of the new empire, and it won solidarity and 
parKmentary skill during the seventies in the so-called 
KuUurkampf, when both in Prussia and the empire 
Bismarck directed an aggressive legislative program 
against the Church. To the efforts of the Iron Chan- 
cellor to secularize marriage and education and to 
subordinate all church interests to those of the state, 
the Centre party under the expert leadership of Windt- 
horst opposed year after year all the obstacles which 
religious conservatism has at its command. After the 
KuUurkampf ended in a compromise in which the 
Cathohc church gained its chief points, the Centre 
party continued to exist with about the same strength, 
representing a conservative attitude in reUgious and 
educational matters and occasionally an anti-national 
direction in military and colonial affairs. It has drawn 
its support chiefly from the Rhine, from Catholic dis- 
tricts of eastern and southeastern Prussia and from the 
strongly Catholic south, having retained its hold on 
these sections with slight changes during forty years. 
In rivalry with the Social Democratic party for working- 
men's votes, the Centre party early framed an aggres- 
sive social program and sought energetically to further 
the interests of the laboring classes (cf. below, chap. X). 

Seated next towards the left in the great Reichstag 
hall on the Konigsplatz in Berlin come the small ''anti- 
national" fractions referred to above. They include 
first the few ''unreconstructed" Guelph patriots of 
Hanover and Brunswick, representatives of constitu- 
encies whom forty years of prosperity under Prussian 
government have not sufl&ced to reconcile to the incor- 



THE GOVERNMENT AND THE PARTIES 123 

poration of Hanover into Prussia. The marriage of the 
son of the Duke of Cumberland, heir of the Guelph 
dynasty, to the daughter of the Emperor in May 1913, 
and the installation of this descendant of the kings of 
Hanover as reigning Duke of Brunswick, brought about 
a reconcihation between Guelph and Hohenzollern and 
a renunciation of Guelphic claims to the Hanoverian 
throne. It did not, however, reconcile the old dyed- 
in-the-wool Hanoverian patriots, who had for forty- 
seven years cursed the Hohenzollern and all his works, 
and the Guelphic fire continued to burn fiercely in the 
bosoms of a part of the Hanoverian aristocracy and 
landed middle class. To the Guelphs should be added 
the other anti-Prussian fractions, the Danes from 
Schleswig-Holstein and the aggressive Poles from 
Germany's Ireland, — West Prussia, Posen and Silesia, 
No less intransigeant than these have been the represen- 
tatives of Alsace-Lorraine, who for forty years refused 
to be digested into Germany's political system, their 
opposition growing if anything more acute after the 
granting of the constitution to the "Imperial Land" in 
191 1. As an expression of their anti-national feehngs all 
of these fractions have voted regularly against national 
measures, most frequently with the Centre party and 
occasionally with the Social Democrats. 

The Liberal group is the successor of the old Liberal 
party, which fifty years ago sought to repeat on German 
soil the Enghsh struggle for parliamentary government. 
Having unsuccessfully fought Bismarck's unconstitu- 
tional poKcy in Prussia, it accepted with enthusiasm 
the results of this policy in the foundation of the new 
German empire ; and in the early sessions of the Reich- 
stag formed a fraction exceeding all other parties com- 
bined, working with the Iron Chancellor on a give- 
and-take basis toward upholding the national program 
and toward a more Hberal construction of the con- 
stitution. It was the fate of German liberalism that 



124 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

its progress had to be sacrificed on the altar of German 
unity, and that when it again began its work in the em- 
pire, it must again be checked, this time by iron economic 
forces which rent it asunder. Bismarck forced the 
tariff question to the front; the old German trend 
towards separatism, always stronger in Hberal than in 
conservative ranks, asserted itself, the more radical 
half of the Liberals adhering to free trade and ardently 
striving for a Hberalizing of the constitution. The 
residue, the rump of the old National Liberal party, 
saw itself robbed one by one of the more distinctive 
tags of liberalism, and the rise of the Social Democrats 
forced it more and more in the direction of conservatism. 
Economically it has represented the industrial system, 
which favors a strong national policy, with Hberal but 
by no means radical tendencies. Its personnel has been 
distinguished, embracing some of the ablest captains 
of industry and a large percentage of the professional 
classes, but it has unfortunately been too dignified, 
in its majority at least, and too much afraid of making 
common cause with the Social Democrats to further 
liberal policies aggressively. 

The Radical group is, as has been shown, the result 
of many splits and reorganizations and has suffered 
much through many and selfish leaders. Having fallen 
heir to the more emphatically Hberal poHcies after the 
economic split in the National Liberal ranks in 1878, 
it was handicapped all through the eighties by its nega- 
tive attitude toward colonial, naval and military expan- 
sion. The military bill of 1893 ^^^ to another spHt, 
which was finally healed fifteen years later. At last 
the national-imperial idea took possession even of the 
successors of Eugene Richter, the great Radical leader 
of the eighties who was so constantly a thorn in Bis- 
marck's side; and in the Reichstag of 191 2 the Radical 
group trailed in behind the government's " imperialistic " 
legislation with something very close to enthusiasm. It 



THE GOVERNMENT AND THE PARTIES 125 

had come to represent more and more the great commer- 
cial class, with its sensitiveness to international trade 
conditions and its yearning for sound finance and a 
fair system of direct taxation. Its electoral votes, 
like those of the National Liberals, have not been con- 
fined to any section of Germany. It is, as is natural, 
the only party which has not hesitated to combine with 
the Social Democrats in the second ballotings. Its 
steady "front against the Right" in matters of taxation 
and inner administration made it to a certain extent the 
nucleus of progressivism in parliamentary struggles. 

The Social Democrats will receive consideration in a 
later chapter. Here it is sufficient to say that while 
the party represents, of course, the working and un- 
propertied classes, many of its leaders have been re- 
cruited from among those intellectual knights-errant 
who were drawn into the ranks of socialism through 
enthusiasm for its economic theories or from a senti- 
mental sympathy with the uplift of the poor. The 
representatives of the party in the Reichstag and in 
the various chambers of the individual German states 
are the editors of the Socialist papers, secretaries of 
the labor unions, master bakers, cigar makers, small 
merchants and innkeepers, with here and there an 
author or a poet. Their growing membership in the 
Reichstag has come mainly from the industrial centres, 
where they have captured such citadels of clericalism 
as Cologne. Theoretically at least they are pledged 
to a program which includes the overthrow of the 
capitalistic state, consequently their position in all 
matters relating to the national development has been 
negative. In times of patriotic enthusiasm, as in the 
appeal to the country by the government for support 
of the colonial policy in 1907, the party loses votes; 
following a period of reaction and national depression, 
as in 191 2, they attract to themselves electors from 
all Hberal ranks, who thus register their violent pro- 



126 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

test against the existing system. That their opposi- 
tion to national ideals is largely academic was proved 
by the practical unanimity with which the party leaders 
followed the national call on the outbreak of the great 
war in August 1914 and the hearty support which the 
party, with remarkably few exceptions, gave the war 
measures in the Reichstag. 

This then is the complicated system of German 
parties in the present day. It is significant that no one 
of these groups constituted even as much as thirty-three 
per cent of the membership of the Reichstag of 191 2, 
and indeed, not once since the formation of the empire 
has one of the five groups mentioned controlled a major- 
ity of the Imperial Diet. The difficulties of govern- 
ment under such a system are enormous. They re- 
solve themselves into the formation and maintenance of 
a "block" for the passage of government measures, 
and in doing this the Chancellor must drive the best 
bargain he can with the individual groups making up 
the "block." It would be out of place here to discuss 
the comparative merits of the two-party and fractional 
systems. The latter prevails in nearly all of the 
Continental legislatures. The real trouble in the Ger- 
man Reichstag has lain less in the fact that no one party 
could take control than in the lack of a responsible 
ministry. As it is, the block must do the bidding of 
the ministry or refuse to do it, because the ministry 
represents the Bundesrat, which in the last instance 
makes and breaks legislation. Added to this has 
been the negative attitude of the Social Democrats 
and the "national" fractions, who have as a matter 
of principle opposed all policies looking toward a 
strengthening of national imperial power. Their irre- 
sponsibility and unmanageableness of the different frac- 
tions are thus increased. 

After his break with the Liberals in 1877, Bismarck 
formed a Conservative alhance, not merely because 



THE GOVERNMENT AND THE PARTIES 127 

the landed gentry fell in with his economic views, 
especially regarding the tariff, but also because they 
were more congenial with the sovereign and with the 
monarchically incHned ministry. Conservatives and 
Clericals, landed interest and church interest, formed 
the backbone of government through the eighties. 
With their help Bismarck put through his compulsory 
insurance bills and other sociahstic legislation, by which 
he hoped to pull the teeth of the whole Socialist move- 
ment. Through this conservative alliance the whole prin- 
ciple of authority was vastly strengthened : it was the 
natural union between the representative of the auto- 
cratic principle of government in the sovereign, backed 
by the feudal Junker, and the organized and conservative 
forces of the church. 

When anti-imperial elements threatened his policies, 
as in 1887, Bismarck had but to beat the long roll of 
national defense and point to the restlessness of France, 
and the nation responded to his call, returning a con- 
servative-national majority. When in 1890 additional 
army reforms were needed, and it seemed that the electors 
might not again respond, Bismarck seriously considered 
a stroke against the constitution which should sweep 
away universal suffrage and put the Reichstag, like the 
Prussian Chamber, safely and permanently imder 
Conservative control. The young emperor, however, 
temporized with the Liberals ; and the Iron Chancellor's 
successors, Caprivi and Hohenlohe, found it possible to 
govern with Liberal help, winning thereby the hatred 
of the Conservatives. Occasionally the Kaiser's min- 
isters would veer about and pass a measure with Con- 
servative votes over the heads of the Liberals. Gradu- 
ally the Clerical party, standing as it has always stood for 
conservatism and yet for social progress, holding its 
forces under control down to the last man, brought 
itself into a position where it controlled the balance of 
power between the struggling forces of Conservatism 



128 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

and Liberalism. From 1895 to 1906 the presidency of 
the Reichstag was held by a member of the Centre 
party; and in the same period the government found 
its way to great national ends completely blocked by 
Conservative opposition. In the Prussian Diet the 
landed gentry held the whip hand and shattered again 
and again carefully prepared plans for the development 
of internal commerce by canals; in the Reichstag, the 
Conservative forces with the help of the Centre resisted 
direct taxation and brought the finances of the empire 
to the verge of bankruptcy. 

After the turn of the century the difiiculties of the 
legislative system were tremendously increased by the 
rapid growth of economic contrasts. German industry 
went forward by leaps and bounds in this period : it is 
estimated that in the decade 1 896-1 906 taxable values 
in the Empire increased forty per cent, a ratio which, 
was probably exceeded between 1906 and 1914. This 
increase was almost entirely in the industrial and com- 
mercial districts, the great agricultural tracts of Mecklen- 
burg and Prussia to the northeast of Elbe showing a 
depreciation in values and an increase in debt. The 
landed gentry of the Northeast, however, are the Con- 
servative party of Germany ; and through the organiza- 
tion of the Agrarian League {Bund der Landwirte) in 
1893 and the political pressure which this aggressive 
association was able to exert, the agrarian interests 
crowded to the front each year with ever increasing 
demands. Stung by depreciating values and increasing 
debt, the party of the landed aristocracy, which through 
its very social weight exercises a strong influence on 
the ministry, forced the government to raise the pro- 
tective duties on agricultural products in 1902, putting 
through the measure with the help of the Centre party. 

Despite the strategic cleverness by which the Clerical 
party thus assured itself a deciding voice in all questions 
of national policy, a time finally came when the govern- 



THE GOVERNMENT AND THE PARTIES 129 

merit would no longer be coerced. The Clerical phalanx 
which had carried its way by sheer power of discipKne on 
so many a legislative field met defeat when it collided 
with the growing enthusiasm for Germany overseas. 
In 1906 the Centre, in common with the Social Demo- 
crats, refused to grant the government's demand for a 
sufficient appropriation to crush thoroughly the Herero 
revolt in Southwest Africa. At once Biilow brought 
Bismarck's old formula into action. The Reichstag 
was dissolved, and the government appealed to the 
voters of the nation to say whether Germany should 
continue on the path of world power or not. Bismarck 
had known how to play on the popular chord of love of 
German unity and fear of France : it was flattering 
testimony to the advance of the national idea that Biilow 
could successfully appeal to the desire of the nation for 
overseas dominion and meet with enthusiastic support 
from the same Radicals who had fought the increase 
in the army in 1887. The country responded with alac- 
rity. The powerful phalanx of the Centre remained 
unbroken in the general election of 1907 ; but the 
Social Democratic vote in the Reichstag was almost cut 
in half, and the night of the election the Schlossplatz 
in Berlin rang with the huzzas of thousands of patriotic 
Germans, celebrating the national idea in the person 
of the Emperor. The government went immediately 
to work with a new majority based on this idea, a 
majority made up of Conservatives, Liberals and 
Radicals against the Centre and the parties of protest. 
But no sooner was the national crisis passed and the 
supplies voted for pacification and development in 
Southwest Africa than the new "block" spHt on the 
economic reef. In the necessary reform of national 
finances, the Liberal-Radical groups backed the govern- 
ment in its demand for direct taxes, among which was 
included the inheritance tax; the Conservative rep- 
resentatives, the owners of entailed and family estates, 



I30 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

refused to accept the inheritance tax, and the Centre 
availed themselves of the opportunity of revenge on 
the ministry. Chancellor Biilow was placed once 
more before the alternative of governing with the old 
Conservative-Clerical majority or resigning. He re- 
signed, proving that the imperial ministry is respon- 
sible — not to the majority in the Reichstag, but to the 
Conservative minority ! His successor, Bethmann-Holl- 
weg, accepted the "blue-black" block, as the Liberal 
newspapers picturesquely described the union of feudal 
and clerical interests, and for two and one-half years, 
1909-12, Germany went through an era of reaction. 

In the elections of 191 2 the natural result came. 
The electors, dissatisfied with the subservience of the 
government to agrarian interests, restless of clerical 
domination and smarting from the Morocco disappoint- 
ment, registered their protest in the manner which had 
become traditional, by voting for the Social Democratic 
candidates. As a result, when the Chancellor faced 
the new Reichstag, he found that it would be impossible 
for him to construct a block without the aid of Liberal 
elements. The Conservative parties, with all of their 
alKes, mustered fewer votes than at any time since the 
formation of the empire, the Centre fewer than at any 
time since it was launched as a party. Conservatives, 
Clericals and allies but slightly outnumbered the com- 
bined Radicals and Socialists ; the 45 National Liberals 
held the balance of power. 

Under the circumstances a Conservative-Clerical 
block was impossible, and the government was re- 
Heved of the necessity of governing with the help of 
the Centre, a burden which had been felt by every 
Chancellor since 1895. A Liberal block could have 
been formed only with the help of the Social Democrats, 
something which no ministry dependent on the monarchy 
could think of accepting. Bethmann-HoUweg took 
the only course possible for a minister responsible only 



THE GOVERNMENT AND THE PARTIES 131 

to the crown : he strove for a policy which should unite 
all groups representing the propertied classes, relying 
on the antagonism of the National Liberals to the 
Social Democrats to hold the Liberal forces in Hne for 
conservative legislation. In 191 2 with striking una- 
nimity all the groups except the Social Democrats 
and the "national" parties voted for the increases in 
the army and navy; when it came to covering the in- 
creased expenditures, the government bill laid a heavy 
burden on wine and spirits, putting off once more the 
troublesome problem of direct taxation. Although 
it was certain that the Chancellor could count on a 
majority for the inheritance tax, the measure could 
have been passed only with Social Democratic help in 
the face of Conservative opposition, and the Chancellor 
frankly confessed himself as unwilling to accept success 
at this price. The emergencies of the foreign situation 
in 1913 brought a compromise, which was, however, in 
effect a Liberal-Sociahst victory. The enormous one- 
time expenditure, as well as the annual deficit caused 
by the provisions of the Defense Bill of that year (cf. 
page 11) forced the ministry to incorporate the principle 
of direct taxation into its fiscal policy, and under the 
stress of the national danger the Conservative-Clerical 
groups were forced to accept it. They succeeded, 
however, for the present in standing off the hated in- 
heritance tax, and the increased annual expenditures 
were provided for by property-increment and sugar 
taxes. The immense sacrifices which the emergency 
called for from all classes drew the sting from party 
defeats and disappointments in this crisis. 

This rather lengthy review of recent political forma- 
tions in the Reichstag makes clear the difficulties which 
have attended the fractional system in Germany's na- 
tional affairs. Had the various political groups, represent- 
ing as they do to a considerable extent economic groups, 
all been filled with a patriotic spirit of give-and-take, the 



132 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

government could have traced a path toward political 
and economic welfare with far better results. As it 
was, however, financial interests and class prejudices 
have at times brought the ministry well nigh to the end 
of its resources and rendered the Reichstag almost impo- 
tent for the transaction of business. Especially has 
the government found the matter of taxation difl&cult 
of adjustment. The danger to the ministerial program 
lay always in the two extremes. The extreme agrarian 
party, from causes partly obvious and partly to be dis- 
cussed below, has wielded a poHtical power that is 
vastly out of proportion to its numbers, and as a matter 
of course has employed this power to defeat a readjust- 
ment of taxation or any fiscal changes in line with the 
growth of population and industry. On the other 
hand, the Social Democrats, in spite of a growing ten- 
dency to participate in government and to push aside 
their hard and fast economic theories, have been ag- 
gressively, even belligerently, out of sympathy with the 
monarchy. Their ardent radicalism has made it difi&cult 
for the government to use them or for the Liberal groups 
to combine with them in legislation and has compelled 
the nation to submit under universal suffrage to govern- 
ment by a minority. 

It was certain that in spite of the failure of Billow's 
national block the "block system" had come into im- 
perial politics to stay and that all important questions 
of inner administration in the future would have to be 
settled with the aid of a liberal block. It is not think- 
able that the government will be able to rule again en- 
tirely with a powerful Conservative-Clerical majority, 
still less that it can get along, as it once did, simply 
with conservative support. While no one believed 
that the Social Democratic vote of four and one-quarter 
millions in the Reichstag election of 191 2 represented 
simply Socialist strength, a sharp veering of popular 
sentiment in the direction of radicalism was observable. 



THE GOVERNMENT AND THE PARTIES 133 

Germany is not America or England or France, and 
there will always be a number of parties, as much to 
represent the vigorous individuality of political leaders 
as to champion the various economic and social interests, 
which are often selfishly narrow. The hope of liberal- 
ism and progress hes in the working together of Hberal 
elements, which means that the Social Democrats must 
in the end modify their sharp class sentiments, and that 
the National Liberals must show their readiness to 
cooperate in legislation with the more radical groups. 
Such a hberal group must first command the confidence 
of the middle classes in its enthusiasm for the national 
idea, and then it may hope to make the ministry re- 
sponsible to it, in fact if not in law. That Germany's 
entire poUtical system and administration has remained 
in a state of arrested development has been due more than 
anything else to the jealousies of the Hberal fractions 
themselves. Bickerings between National Liberals and 
Radicals have lamed all united action by these groups, 
while the former have preferred anything to an even 
distant affihation with the Social Democrats and the 
Social Democrats have been willing to sacrifice every 
practical advantage in legislation to tlie pleasure of a 
quixotic lance breaking for far-off theories. The result 
has been that all have been ruled by a Conservative 
minority. The stimulating example which Germany 
gave to the world of a united nation at the outbreak 
of the war may well be of lasting value to German po- 
litical Hfe, if, when Mars no longer rules the hour, the 
inspiration of this memory shall take away something 
of party rancor and show the way to a union of hberal 
elements. 

Any reforms which find their way into the German 
imperial constitution must first make themselves felt 
in the methods and usages of the Reichstag. Apparently 
one of the most active of popular assembhes, it is in 
practice one of the most impotent. Theoretically, as 



134 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

we have seen, bills may be introduced by any member ; 
practically, they are introduced by the government and 
modified by the Reichstag, either in committee or on the 
floor of the house. In the committees, which represent 
the larger fractions of the house, it is usually made pretty 
clear by the representatives of the dynasties just what 
will be acceptable to the Bundesrat; and in view of the 
iron discipline of the various fractions, the house usually 
votes what the committee agrees upon. Measures 
originating in the Reichstag itself have small chance of 
acceptance by the government in the form presented, 
although they may be made later a part of the govern- 
ment program. It is therefore in effect government by 
the Emperor and the dynasties with the consent of the 
Reichstag. The result has been a more or less hostile 
attitude on the part of the representatives of the popular 
parties toward the government. The ministry and such 
members of the Bundesrat as choose to be present occupy 
elevated seats facing the assembly, and their attitude 
toward the popular house is to all intents and purposes 
that of the diplomatic representatives of some foreign 
treaty power. The imperial chancellors have all been 
men of force enough to command a hearing and to com- 
pel cooperation : other less able members of the ministry 
have sometimes resented the imputation that the pre- 
siding Officers of the Reichstag could exercise parliamen- 
tary control over their actions. That there is a general 
uncertainty as to the exact status of the ministry in 
the house has been illustrated on many occasions. A 
striking example of this occurred in connection with the 
Emperor's threat in May 191 2 to destroy the constitu- 
tion of Alsace-Lorraine (cf. page 106). One of the 
Social Democrats took occasion to attack the Prussian 
constitution on the floor of the house, and the Chan- 
cellor, Bethmann-Hollweg, accompanied by such mem- 
bers of the Bundesrat as were present, arose and left 
the chamber, followed by the jeers of the Social Demo- 



THE GOVERNMENT AND THE PARTIES 135 

crats. The Kaiser's chief minister claimed that the 
presiding officer should have called the offending speaker 
to order, and as soon as this was done, the Chancellor 
returned, accompanied by his entourage. Some Con- 
servatives asserted that in the absence of the govern- 
ment's representatives the Reichstag could not legally 
transact business. 

Another illustration of the superior and independent 
attitude of the government toward the popular assembly 
occurred in the early days of the Liberal-Radical- 
Sociahst Reichstag of 191 2. The Diet was much agi- 
tated and its business greatly impeded by the excite- 
ment attending the election of its presiding officers. 
According to traditions, the Social Democrats as the 
most numerous party in the Diet should have furnished 
the President. It is, however, the duty of the President 
and two Vice-Presidents after the organization of the 
Reichstag to visit the imperial palace and announce to 
the Emperor the opening of the house. This had been 
regarded as a court function of some importance and 
was accompanied by the somewhat stilted ceremonies 
usual on such occasions. Now the Social Democrats, 
whose program is frankly anti-monarchical, have al- 
ways protested against court ceremony in every form; 
and it was only after a long and acrid debate within the 
fraction that Socialists finally agreed that their rep- 
resentative might fulfil "the necessary functions of 
representation." A Social Democratic president was, 
however, unthinkable, not merely to the entire Right 
and Centre but to the National Liberals as well; and 
the Conservatives in the chamber, taking advantage 
of the general uncertainty as to the behavior of the 
Socialist at court, elected as President the leader of the 
Clerical party, Dr. Spahn. Of the National Liberals, 
however, enough went over to the Left to secure the 
election of Herr Scheidemann, a printer, the Social 
Democratic leader, as first Vice-President and a Radi- 



136 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

cal as Second Vice-President. Dr. Spahn declined to 
sit in the presidency with a Social Democrat, and Herr 
Scheidemann actually presided over the Diet to the glee 
of his fraction, until another Radical leader, Herr Kaempf , 
was elected President. Then, however, a fresh diflSculty 
arose. Acting on the instructions of his party, Scheide- 
mann refused to go to theScMoss for presentation, alleging 
that while as President he might fulfil the necessary 
court functions, as Vice-President he found it unneces- 
sary. The Chancellor then announced that acting on 
his advice, the Emperor would not receive an incomplete 
presidential group. The net result of this curious 
collision of caste feeling with political bitterness and 
proletarian narrow-mindedness was that the National 
Liberals, with scattering votes from the Right and 
Centre, finally voted out the Socialist and voted in a 
Radical-Liberal presidency. 

In its attitude of superiority toward the popular 
assembly the government has been supported through 
thick and thin by the Conservative fraction. In the 
Reichstag of 191 2 a successful attempt was made to 
introduce the British custom of addressing minor ques- 
tions to the ministry. Formal question and response 
in set speeches had been a regular part of the relation- 
ship between ministry and Diet, but this Liberal- 
Radical Reichstag provided for brief questions, an- 
nounced the day before, such as are constantly levelled 
at the ministerial benches at Westminster. This 
practice, however, presupposes a sort of reponsibihty 
to the house, the very appearance of which the govern- 
ment was anxious to avoid; and the ministers, among 
them the minister for foreign affairs, the late Kiderlen- 
Waechter, evaded Social Democratic questions with the 
superior manner of the Junker, amid thunders of ap- 
plause from the Conservative benches. 

A somewhat similar incident occurred in December 
1913 in connection with the Zabern affair, which for some 



THE GOVERNMENT AND THE PARTIES 137 

weeks held Germany breathless with excitement and 
sent thrills across the Vosges into France. Smarting 
under the insults of the Francophile population of the 
Alsatian town, the mihtary stationed there, acting 
under the orders of their officers, had attacked citizens 
and practically taken over the administration of order, 
even imprisoning some members of the municipal govern- 
ment. Facing a stormy Reichstag, the Chancellor, Beth- 
mann-Hollweg, in a rather lame speech of explanation, 
in which an investigation was promised, was understood 
to say that in any colKsion of authority between the 
mihtary and the civil power, the former must be supreme. 
After a session in which for once the outraged feelings 
of the National Liberals drove them into cooperation 
with the Social Democrats, a vote of censure was passed 
with the help of practically the entire Left and Centre, 
the Conservatives voting with feudal solidarity in sup- 
port of the Chancellor. The incident would have 
brought the ministry to instant fall in any country with 
really parhamentary government. In Germany it had 
no further effect than to register the feehngs of the 
nation and to lead to a rather halting explanation from 
the Chancellor on the following day. While acknowl- 
edging the supremacy of the law, the Kaiser's chief 
minister disclaimed even the slightest responsibility 
to any one save his "imperial master." 

It is plain that the Reichstag, checked and hampered 
3,5 it is in, its full cooperation in government, is not yet 
a parhament, but that it is tending to become one. It 
does enjoy the opportunity of free speech and full 
criticism, and it avails itself of this opportunity to the 
fullest extent. Indeed, it is safe to say that there is no 
dehberative body in the world where discussion is so 
untrammelled and goes so far afield. In discussing the 
various budgets the opportunity is given for almost 
unhmited speechmaking, and a lenient presidency 
permits almost any subject to be illuminated, from the 



138 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

theological views of some university professor to the 
latest case of mistreatment of recruits or the last army 
duel. Under a Conservative presidency the discussion 
of the monarch was forbidden, but Radical presiding 
officers have shown extreme latitude in that regard. 
To this freedom of debate is added a freedom of interrup- 
tion, which is a still worse delay to business. Zwischen- 
rufe, interruptions, by which one expresses his approval 
or disapproval of the speaker's ideas, are characteristic 
of German dehberative assemblies, and are tolerated in 
the Reichstag to a degree which often seriously delays 
business, especially when joined, as they often are, with 
colloquies between the speaker and the member in- 
terrupting. The debates in the Reichstag are given wide 
publicity in the newspapers : and it may be said that 
with all of their wordiness they have been an invaluable 
means of educating the German people in parliamentary 
methods and in the direction of more Uberal ideas. 
Especially the Clerical and Social Democratic members 
through their J effective party organizations are kept 
informed of cases of maladministration of justice, of 
the mistreatment of recruits, of duels, of unconstitu- 
tional acts or persecution on the part of government 
officials, and they give to such cases a publicity in the 
national assembly which cannot fail to have a wholesome 
effect. If they cannot reach the offenders, they can 
occasionally sting the government into action ; and in 
any event the fear of publicity is a powerful deterrent 
in preventing future cases. The attitude of the Social 
Democrats in the Reichstag, as elsewhere in public, has been 
one of marked insurgency, and especially in the Liberal- 
Radical Diet of 1 91 2 they have shown themselves unre- 
strained. 



CHAPTER VII 

Feudalism and Agriculture 

" Germany does not look for her salvation to Prussia's 
liberalism but to Prussia's power." This statement of 
Bismarck, made in an oft-quoted letter to the Freiherr 
von Billow in 1861, marks the corner-stone of the founda- 
tion of German unity. Not only does the empire rest 
upon Prussia, but Prussia has become to a certain ex- 
tent the empire. Prussia's monarch is its emperor and 
the commander of its army and navy, Prussia's minister- 
president is its chancellor, the Prussian capital is its 
capital. Prussia includes nearly 65 per cent of the 
empire's area, more than 61 per cent of its population 
and 60 per cent of its taxable values. Prussia's methods 
in official administration have become the model for the 
smaller states. The mihtary forces of the greater part 
of the smaller duchies and principalities are attached to 
Prussian commands, and the railways of all the central 
states are at Prussia's mercy and therefore completely 
subordinate to the Prussian administration. 

And this with justice. It is hardly necessary to refer 
again to the part which Prussia played in forging German 
unity. The mihtary organization and aggressive diplo- 
macy of her earlier sovereigns raised the kingdom be- 
tween the Thirty Years' War and the Napoleonic wars 
to be one of the five great powers of the West, and bound 
about the ancient electoral lands of Brandenburg Pom- 
erania and the semi-Slavic duchies to the east and 
the Westphalian and Rhenish country to the west, 
welding the whole together with the iron bands of the 

139 



I40 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

Prussian military administration and the Prussian 
bureaucracy. When in 1866 Bismarck and the Prussian 
armies put an end to Austria's rivalry for the hegemony 
among the German states, Prussia planted the black 
and white standard permanently on the Danish border, 
swept away the Guelph and Hessian dynasties and 
created by the power of her army and diplomacy the 
North German Confederation, in which the smaller 
states were only her satellites. And when at Versailles 
in 187 1 after a long debate the South German kingdoms, 
Bavaria and Wiirtemberg, who themselves looked back 
upon a long history of brilliant national achievement, 
finally agreed to subordinate certain features of their 
ancient independence to the longed-for German unity, 
they entered an alliance in which Prussia was to control, 
if not a majority, at least a commanding voice in the 
Federal Council, under a constitution which could be 
altered only with Prussia's consent. 

This submission to the leadership of Prussia was not 
looked upon from the beginning with anything like 
enthusiasm by most South Germans. Badener and 
Wiirtemberger and Bavarian had each a glowing love 
for his own fatherland and each would have been untrue 
to his national characteristics and to the traditions of 
more than one century if he had not felt a deep aversion 
to the drill-stick methods of the Prussian military sys- 
tem and the galling arrogance of Prussian officialdom. 
But while they disliked Prussia and hated Bismarck, 
the South Germans loved German unity still more, and 
the power and prosperity which came to the union under 
Prussia's lead soon began to reconcile them to the self- 
sufficiency even of Prussian drill-master and bureaucrat. 
The local pride of the South German states still burned 
brightly, but there came with the passing years such a 
levelling away of local peculiarities and an effacing of 
state boundaries as must come with the growth of in- 
dustry and the improvement of the means of communica- 



FEUDALISM AND AGRICULTURE 141 

tion. The imperial idea and the enthusiasm for Ger- 
many's high place among the nations in the end mastered 
the South German democrat and the Prussian radical 
aHke, just as the enthusiasm for German unity had 
mastered their fathers. Furthermore, the class call of 
the Social Democrats brought the working classes of all 
Germany under one standard, where they became to a 
certain extent moulded into one political type. Even 
deep-seated ethnic characteristics yielded to the age of 
movement, and it grew more and more difficult to recog- 
nize the Prussian by his reserve of manner and energy, 
the Saxon by his genial pettiness, the Swabian by his 
blundering good nature and pathos and the Bavarian 
by his sturdy straightforwardness. Into all of them 
there came in the quick-time march of new Germany 
something of Prussian self-assertiveness and hustle. 

It has been necessary to recite these well-known facts 
in the genesis of the empire in order to explain the 
importance to Germany of Prussia's political system 
and the influence of the Prussian ruling class on German 
institutions. In constitutional development, to be sure, 
nearly all of the smaller states have outstripped Prussia, 
for, with two exceptions, all have come to enjoy liberal 
constitutions, or constitutions tending strongly toward 
liberalism. In most cases the limitations on the suffrage 
in the choice of representatives are very slight. In 
Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, a tiny Thuringian principality, 
in 191 2 a Social Democratic majority in the chamber 
elected a thoroughgoing Social Democratic presidency. 
In three of the small states of this region Social Demo- 
cratic chambers have assisted the ruler in administering 
government. Baden, Bavaria and Wiirtemberg have 
practically universal suffrage ; and in the last-named 
state, which more than a century ago absorbed demo- 
cratic ideas from France, the king's ministry has often 
worked with the Social Democrats in passing measures 
through the chambers. German historians are fond of 



142 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

referring to the development of the South German con- 
stitutions as "inorganic," meaning thereby that these 
instruments have accorded to the popular electorate a 
greater share in government than it was prepared to 
exercise. That these states have had their own problems 
is certainly true ; but there are those who believe that 
self-government is best learned by practice, even at the 
cost of mistakes, and that the administration of the 
affairs of their own state is the best school for a people 
who would be free. 

In any event, if the too rapid development of popular 
government in the South German states was inorganic, 
the lack of development in the Mecklenburg duchies 
and in Prussia is certainly anachronistic. Mecklenburg- 
Schwerin and Mecklenburg- Strelitz are still under 
feudal rule. In these states, lying in the great alluvial 
plain between the Elbe and the Baltic, a land of few 
towns and many great estates, the great landlords con- 
stitute an oligarchy which has thus far resisted all efforts 
to impose a modern constitution. It can naturally 
only be a question of time when this citadel of feudahsm 
will yield and peasant and townsman obtain a share in 
the government of their state; but thus far the efforts 
of the grand dukes, who desire above all to regulate the 
financial situation through constitutional means, have 
failed to break down the opposition of the country 
gentry. 

In Prussia also the opposition to constitutional revision 
proceeds from the same class. After the revolution of 
1848-49 had spent its force and the weak and romantic 
Frederick William IV, backed by the landed aristocracy, 
had withdrawn the constitution which the popular up- 
heaval had wrested from him, he finally in 1850 presented 
to his people an instrument which might be called the 
last word in reaction. The arbitrary will of the monarch, 
with a ministry responsible to him alone, was fenced in 
by an upper chamber representing only the crown and 



FEUDALISM AND AGRICULTURE 143 

the aristocracy and a lower chamber elected according 
to the "three class system," indirectly, with viva voce 
balloting. Under the three-class arrangement the total 
amount of taxes paid in the electoral district is divided 
into three equal parts. The names of the electors having 
been arranged in a Hst according to the amount of taxes 
which each pays, the list is then divided into three parts, 
so that each group pays one-third of the total taxes. 
Each one of these groups or "classes" has an equal 
voice in selecting the primary electors, who then choose 
the representative in the national Diet, the Landtag. 
As a result of this division the electors in Prussia in 1908 
were classified as follows : fijst class, 4 per cent ; second 
class, 14 per cent ; third class, 82 per cent. The injus- 
tice of a system which rests entirely upon a property 
basis, where the vote of one man may sometimes have a 
weight four hundred times greater than that of another, 
has long been recognized even in Conservative circles, 
but beyond the redistricting of certain populous parts 
of Prussia no change has been made since 1850. The 
government has repeatedly promised reforms in the 
electorate, and in 1910 the ministry did bring in a reform 
measure, conservative enough but representing a distinct 
advance in giving increased influence to the middle 
classes. After a long debate in committee, the bill was 
rejected through Conservative manoeuvres. 

The control which the great landholders have exer- 
cised over the elections through the greater weight of 
their votes under the "three class system" is, however, 
less important than that wielded through the silent ter- 
rorism of the " open ballot." The voting for the Reichstag 
is secret ; that for the Prussian Landtag is public. Ter- 
rorizing the electors is of course forbidden by law, and 
may, if proved, invahdate an election ; but tenants and 
employees on the estates of the eastern provinces of 
Prussia are not protected by any organization, and even 
if they were, the administration of justice in these dis- 



144 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

tricts is entirely in the hands of the landholding class. 
It is easy to see how quickly a vote against the candi- 
date of the local gentry might lead to loss of home and 
hving for the tenant-employee and his family and how 
difficult it would be to obtain redress from the courts. 
Similarly in the small towns a vote for a Social Demo- 
cratic or even a Radical or National Liberal candidate 
might provoke a boycott which would quickly ruin the 
small shopkeeper. 

Under this constitution, born as it was of the spirit of 
reaction and held in effect through the fear of the rising 
industrial democracy, power in Prussia has remained in 
the hands of the landholders in the districts east of the 
Elbe and to a less degree in those of the upper middle 
class in the industrial West. The tremendous shifts in 
population which have accompanied the growth of the 
cities in Germany since i860 have created some rotten 
boroughs and left nearly all of the larger cities in Prussia 
with inadequate representation in the Landtag. Some 
progress has been made toward increasing the number 
of representatives allowed certain cities : but it still 
remains true that the agricultural districts in Prussia 
are greatly over-represented as compared with the indus- 
trial districts and that the kingdom is to a certain extent 
governed in a feudalistic manner. In the Landtag of 
1908 there were to be found 139 landholders, 23 manu- 
facturers, six small industrialists and two workingmen. 
The results of such a state of affairs, which resembles 
that existing in England before the passage of the Re- 
form Bill of 1832, are manifest in the rigid attitude of the 
entire administration toward anything that savors of 
Hberalism. The control of the schools allows no com- 
promise in the matter of rehgious instruction. Not until 
191 1 did the Landtag authorize the building of crematories 
in Prussia, although at that time thirteen existed in less 
reactionary German states. The measure finally passed 
by a majority of one over the votes of the Clerical party 



FEUDALISM AND AGRICULTURE 



145 



and certain ultra-orthodox Lutheran Conservatives. 
When the erection of crematories and the cremation of 
corpses was finally permitted, the authorization was 
accompanied by restrictions which made evident the 
hostile spirit of the government toward such innovations. 
The formula which the government physician must fill 
out before permission was given for incineration was a 
masterpiece of bureaucratic arrogance, with its heart- 
less, not to say indecent, inspection of the corpse and 
record of its condition. Nevertheless, by 191 3 there 
were said to be 29 crematories in operation in Prussia, 
nearly all owned by the municipalities. In some cities 
under clerical control, notably Cologne, the municipal 
authorities made use of the local option allowed by 
the statute and refused to permit the erection of a 
crematory. 

There can of course be no liberalizing of the national 
administration in Prussia without a liberalizing of the 
constitution, and as we have seen, the forces of reaction 
have thus far been strong enough to prevent that. The 
chief opposition has lain with the landed aristocrat, 
the so-called Junker, the backbone of the Conservative 
party. To the bonds of caste and feudal interest which 
hold this class together has been added the economic 
necessity of defending legislatively the agrarian interest.^ 

^ The political complexion of the Landtag in recent years has been as 
follows : 





1898 


1903 


1908 


1913 


Ultra-Conservatives 

Free Conservatives {Reichspartei) . 

National Liberals 

Radicals 

Centre 


144 
58 
75 
36 

100 

13 

7 


143 
59 
79 
32 
97 

13 

10 


152 
60 

65 

36 

104 

7 

15 

4 


148 
53 
73 
40 

103 
10 
12 


Social Democrats 

Poles 


Unattached 


4 



146 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

Whatever may be its attitude towards political prog- 
ress, the Prussian landed aristocracy has a right to claim 
a major part of the credit for the creation of united 
Germany. "Every Kleist a soldier!" was said of one 
distinguished Brandenburg family, famed both in arms 
and letters ; and the same thing might be said of many 
another Prussian family, whose members have served 
the Hohenzollern for two hundred and fifty years against 
Austrians, Swedes and French, as their ancestors served 
the German cause against the heathen Slavs in the North- 
east. A strong military and poUtical instinct runs 
through these families, a profound devotion to the 
Prussian name, an abiding faith in the monarchy as a 
God-founded and God-protected institution, an inborn 
capacity for discipline and a commanding sense of duty. 
The sons of these families still constitute the backbone 
of the army and navy, and they are found enjoying the 
highest offices in the diplomacy and inner administration 
both of Prussia and the empire. They are the only class 
in Germany with a well-developed "political sense." 
They are the bulwark of the monarchy and the social 
anchor of the state in all storms of industrial upheaval. 

To the foreigner who sees the baron and his family 
visiting in Berlin during a few weeks of the winter or 
early spring, he is a striking and original personality. 
Filled to the brim with class prejudices, in many cases im- 
poverished by the economic changes which have drawn 
wealth from the agricultural into the industrial districts, 
indifferent to literature and ignorant of art, untravelled 
in the sense in which the American and Englishman 
understands travel, insulated by his training and prej- 
udices from the streams of modern political and economic 
thought, — the Prussian country gentleman is neverthe- 
less possessed of a simplicity in his view of life and a 
virility and force of character that mark him out any- 
where as a noteworthy social and political force. He is 
what the English landed aristocrat might have been had 



/ 



FEUDALISM AND AGRICULTURE 147 

there been no Cromwell and no Revolution of 1688. It 
is extremely fortunate for Germany that along with her 
tremendous industrial growth she has not yet seriously 
weakened this class, which depends for its very existence 
on the maintenance of satisfactory agricultural conditions. 

How difficult it has been for the Junker to maintain his 
prestige with the advancing cost of living and demands 
of life, one may easily understand. The two great diffi- 
culties which confronted the East Prussian landholder 
in his effort to hold his position economically were the 
increasing cost of production and the growing competi- 
tion with foreign countries in the sale of food products. 
Up to half a century ago it was comparatively easy for 
him to maintain the economic and social conditions 
which his father and grandfather had enjoyed. His 
labor was stationary, having dwelt for generations in 
the villages on or near his estate, his products found a 
steady market at prices which rose with the cost of living, 
keeping step with the general increase in population. 

But with the rapid industrial growth that followed the 
extension of the railway Unes and the development of 
the early days of the empire, the East Elbian Junker's 
troubles began. Agricultural labor began to become 
more mobile, and as the North German towns grew by 
leaps and bounds, it became harder and harder to keep 
the young men and women on the land. The laborers' 
cottages on most of the great estates of the East are 
owned by the great landholders, and the condition of 
these dwellings is often deplorably dismal and unsani- 
tary. The hours of labor are long and the schools are 
deficient. The absolute dependence on the "bread- 
giver," as the landlord-employer is called, enforced 
by the harsh special laws, which ever since the end of 
serfdom, more than a century ago, have given special 
protection to the employers of rural labor, has grown 
ever more galling as the spirit of independence has 
spread through the agricultural districts. The resulting 



148 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

withdrawal of labor from the land went on increasingly 
for more than a generation until it became an acute 
problem for the landlords, who strove to meet it in part 
at least by trying to get from the Prussian Landtag 
severer laws controlling rural labor, in part also by the 
importation of Polish men and women, chiefly from 
Galicia. (Cf. Chapter XII.) The other alternative by 
which the emergency might have been met — lowering 
the cost of production by the introduction of labor-saving 
machinery — was out of the question, both because of 
the Junker's conservatism and his poverty. Farm 
machinery, most of it of American manufacture, did 
find its way into the Northeast, but both the initiative 
and the capital were lacking to make use of it on any- 
thing like the scale in which it is employed on the farms 
west of the Mississippi. 

That the landowner was not going to let himself be 
forced to the wall became, however, perfectly plain 
after the early nineties and grew plainer with each 
succeeding year. He showed himself as ready to fight 
that Prussia might continue to be an agricultural state 
in which the landholding class should enjoy the highest 
power as his ancestors were to fight to drive the Swedes 
and French from Prussian soil. The Junker was ready, 
if need be, to turn his arms against any ministry that 
betrayed Hberal or anti-agrarian tendencies. The bitter- 
est attacks ever made on Bismarck were not from the 
Liberal or Radical side, but appeared in 1873-76 in the 
Berlin Kreuzzeitung, the organ of the ultra-Conserva- 
tives, while the Chancellor was governing with the aid 
of a Liberal majority. Bismarck during this period 
found himself constantly faced by a steel ring composed 
of his own Junker class, whose points were not lowered 
until the Chancellor came over to their way of thinking. 
Similarly the Conservative Junker attacked Bismarck's 
successor, the liberal minded Caprivi, and brought about 
his fall ; and they leagued with the Clericals to over- 



FEUDALISM AND AGRICULTURE 149 

throw Billow in 1909, because he was resolved to lay- 
some of the burden of reform in the imperial finances 
on Conservative-feudal shoulders. 

Whence comes the political power by which the East 
Elbian aristocrats have been able to dominate not only 
Prussia, but in a measure modern industrial Germany 
as well? It lies first of all in the influence on the ad- 
ministration insured them through prestige of family 
and through their consequent proximity to the emperor- 
king. The Kaiser draws most of his advisers and dip- 
lomats from this class, some of whose families look back 
on a record of service to the Prussian state little less 
glorious than that of the Hohenzollern itself. Further- 
more, in spite of the redistricting that has taken place 
in Prussia from time to time, the weight of representation 
of the eastern agricultural provinces in the national 
legislature far surpasses that of the industrial West. 
And, as has already been seen, the Prussian constitu- 
tion further hedges in its restricted electorate by an 
open ballot, making of the suffrage what one of the 
defenders of the Prussian constitution once called "the 
privileged right of a chosen minority." The Prussian 
ministers have repeatedly promised a modification of the 
electoral law, and as has been shown, an unsuccessful 
effort in that direction was made in 1910; but the 
difficulties in the way of real reform are immense, since 
any liberahzing of the constitution must strengthen the 
Radicals and Social Democrats with a consequent weak- 
ening of the political power of the Junker class, the class 
which furnishes the most loyal and determined sup- 
porters of the monarchy. 

Through its political power the Conservative-agrarian 
class has successfully prevented the laws governing 
agricultural labor from being brought into line with 
modem ideas. In eastern Prussia serfage exists in fact 
if not in name. By the old law of 1810 laborers on the 
land are practically forbidden to cancel a contract or to 



I50 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

strike collectively. Most of the German states impose 
special restrictions on agricultural labor and domestic 
labor. Prussia by the law of 1854 penalizes farm laborers 
and domestics who leave their employer without com- 
pletion of their contract by a fine of $3.75 and imprison- 
ment up to three days. As contracts are made for the 
entire season or the year, it is easy to see what power is 
thrown into the hands of the employer, especially when 
the local legal machinery is under direct control of the 
squire, as is the case on the large estates. The condition 
of the farm laborer in the eastern provinces of Prussia 
is therefore scarcely better than that of his Russian 
neighbor. That this state of affairs calls for reform has 
been clearly recognized in enlightened political circles 
in Prussia ; but just as political reform has thus far 
been wrecked on the shoal of Conservative-agrarian 
power, so social reform in the eastern districts has thus 
far fallen short on account of the patriarchal view of 
life of the landholders. To the East Elbian squire the 
farm laborer is still to all intents and purposes a serf; 
the city with its factories is a den of destruction for the 
bone and sinew of German youth, and the soundness of 
the whole German fabric consists in the maintenance of 
the present rural labor conditions. That in spite of all 
efforts to the contrary, the movement of the laborers 
from the farms to the cities has been an ever-increasing 
problem, has inspired the Junker to no other feeling than 
that restrictions must be imposed upon the mobility of 
the individual laborer. That his end might be attained 
otherwise, and that the laborer who refused to stay as 
a serf might be retained as a freeman by granting him 
the right of organization and by the improvement of the 
farm workers' physical and material condition, is an 
idea which has found its way with difl&culty among the 
landholders. With agricultural land in Germany as a 
whole mortgaged for one-half of its sale value, the land 
owner has not been in a position to undertake anything 



FEUDALISM AND AGRICULTURE 151 

in the nature of benevolence; and his worship of the 
patriarchal system has been too strong for him to con- 
sent to put farm owner and laborer on the same basis 
legally as factory owner and employee. Only the slowly 
rolling years with their unhalting economic trend can 
bring a change in the social and economic condition of the 
eastern provinces. 

Aside from the feudal restrictions on labor by which 
they sought to hold down the cost of production, the agra- 
rian interests have tried in every way to hinder the ad- 
mission of food products from Russia, Austria and over- 
seas to feed the ever-increasing millions in Germany's 
industrial centres. The Agrarian League (cf. page 128), 
not satisfied with imposing excessive restrictions on the 
admission of live cattle into Germany on the plea that 
contagious diseases might be introduced, successfully 
fought to prevent the introduction of frozen meat from 
abroad, and battled unceasingly, although not with 
complete success, for a sweeping government interdict 
on the bringing in of any cured beef or mutton and for 
sharp restrictions on the importation of bacon or lard. 
It waged war on the Berhn Produce Exchange with 
injurious results to the agrarian interests themselves, 
and watched with sleepless eye to prevent any weakening 
of the laws governing stock exchanges. To this propa- 
ganda the agrarian forces added another which finally 
obtained from the imperial government tariff restrictions 
that put Germany in the front rank among protectionist 
nations and reacted sharply on the price of foodstuffs 
and the general welfare of the industrial wage earner. 

When in 1877-78 Bismarck after long fidgeting finally 
went over to a protectionist policy and broke with the 
Liberals, who had imported from England the Man- 
chester theory of laissez oiler, laissez faire in matters of 
international trade, the Chancellor turned, as we have 
seen, to build his majorities on a Conservative basis. 
The Conservative majority was in the main agrarian, 



152 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

and the bounty money to seal the new contract had to 
be an import duty on wheat, rye and oats and minor 
agricultural products. The representatives of the in- 
dustrial interests — the Clericals and a rump of the 
National Liberals — accepted the protectionist policy, 
and the dickering so characteristic of all tariff legislation 
on two continents began. Bismarck's first thought in 
taking up customs reform had probably been revenue 
rather than protection, and there are reasons to doubt 
whether he ever became with soul and spirit a thorough- 
going protectionist ; but Pandora's box had been opened 
and the genii of protection refused to be conjured back 
into it again. In 1885 and again in 1887 duties on food 
products were forced up by a majority of which the 
Conservative phalanx formed the centre and strength. 
But the fall in the price of foodstuffs was not arrested 
in this period, and the landed interests, hampered by 
mortgages and by the economic reaction from the in- 
flated seventies, were forced into a more and more diffi- 
cult position. 

The tide had already turned, however, and the effect 
of protectionist legislation had begun to be felt when 
Caprivi succeeded Bismarck as Imperial Chancellor in 
1890. The new minister immediately inaugurated a 
poKcy of commercial treaties, which by a system of 
reciprocity led at once to tariff concessions toward 
Austria and Russia and were of course immensely un- 
popular in agrarian circles. The Prussian Junker, who 
believed himself hard hit by this reciprocity with Ger- 
many's food-producing neighbors, turned on Caprivi 
and brought his ministry to a fall. In the meantime in 
1893 the Agrarian League was formed and, as we have 
seen, immediately went into the firing line of the agrarian 
advance. The first summons to organization threatened 
the government with dire vengeance if the agrarian de- 
mands were not granted. The founder Ruprecht merely 
formulated the feelings of his aggressive class when he 



FEUDALISM AND AGRICULTURE 153 

summoned the landholders, supposedly "last ditchers" 
in defense of the monarchy, to join forces with the 
"enemies of society as at present established," with the 
Social Democrats, if the government refused to serve 
agrarian interests. After that time the League con- 
stantly forced the fighting for the landholders. The 
Conservatives, assisted usually by the Clericals and 
National Liberals, consistently pushed for agrarian pro- 
tection and the government consistently retreated be- 
fore the combination. Under the favoring influence of 
the reciprocity treaties Germany at last began to reap 
the full results of German industry, patience and tech- 
nical education, and swung rapidly to the forefront 
among nations in the exportation of manufactured prod- 
ucts. This prosperity of industry and commerce while 
the rural interests stood still or retrograded, roused 
the landowners to a very fury of agitation. Regarding 
themselves still as the representatives of royal authority, 
the Junker agitation showed plainly that there was truth 
in the maxim, 

Der Konig ahsolut, 

Wenn er unseren Willen tut 1 ^ 

Most of the commercial treaties ran out in 1901,- 
and the agrarians prepared themselves for the crisis 
by lectures, pamphlets and every other form of propa- 
ganda. More and more the Conservative party had 
become a feudal-agrarian combination, — joined with 
the Clericals their influence in drawing up the tariff 
bill of 1902 was absolute. The representatives of other 
interests were divided, as the National Liberals have 
been in almost every economic crisis ; the Radicals and 
Social Democrats stormed and obstructed in vain, and 
the most that the government could do was to modify 
somewhat the demands of the Agrarian League and 

^ "Let the King be absolute, 
If he only does our will." 



154 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

save some shreds of reciprocity. The bill as finally 
passed increased the duties on grain and meat to a 
point beyond even agrarian dreams of nine years before. 
The effect of this legislation was seen immediately in 
the increased price of meat, and by 1906 and 1907 grain 
had risen to hitherto unheard-of figures. In the mean- 
time, the Agrarian League was by no means satisfied 
with what it had accomplished and began to formulate 
still more aggressive demands, while watching with 
argus eye over every bit of legislation involving the 
landed interests. It claimed in 1913 that 90 per cent of 
its membership were small landholders. If this was true, 
not the least of its accomplishments was the bringing 
together of small and large landholders for a common 
program, in spite of the class prejudices which play so 
large a role in rural circles; but of course its most in- 
fluential elements are to be found in the Conservative 
party. The league also claims that it prevented the 
complete industrialization of Germany, saving German 
agriculture from destruction and preserving the national 
granary, long since destroyed in England. This, if true, 
was an immense service ; and the ability of the empire 
to defy England's starvation program during the war 
must undoubtedly be credited in great part to the ag- 
gressive agrarian efforts of the preceding twenty years. 
Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that the landholding 
interests sought their own welfare with what often 
seemed like a reckless disregard of the welfare of the 
nation. In 1906 and 1907 grain was exported from 
Germany and sold at a lower rate than that which the 
tariff enabled the landholders to extort from the Ger- 
man consumer. The physical welfare of the wage earner 
and the small commercial class weighed as nothing with 
those energetic agrarians who after 1895 swung the lash 
with unrelenting vigor over the head of the government. 
It was not indeed merely with respect to the tariff on 
foodstuffs that the conservative-agrarian classes in a 



FEUDALISM AND AGRICULTURE 155 

measure terrorized the government in the empire and in 
Prussia. In 1899 the Prussian ministry brought before 
the Landtag a well-matured, far-seeing plan of canal 
building for the northwestern part of the kingdom, a 
system which was to connect the large industrial dis- 
tricts with the Rhine, Weser and Elbe. The combina- 
tion of Agrarians and Clericals rejected it. In 1901 
another bill, which provided in addition for canaKzing 
the waterways leading into the Spree, Oder and Vistula, 
— in other words, for the development of the water routes 
throughout all of northern and eastern Prussia, — was 
voted down by the same combination. At last in 1905 
a similar bill was accepted only after the government 
had bound itself to a system of towing charges and river 
tolls which in Conservative eyes would minimize the 
danger of the easy introduction of foreign products. 
This proposition, to erect toll bars on the formerly free 
rivers of Prussia, required the assent of the other German 
states ; but agrarian agreement to the canal plan hinged 
on this arrangement being made, and bitter opposition 
to any development of the waterways was promised un- 
less some compensation were given the landed interests. 
Germany, then, to a considerable extent, and Prussia 
to a great extent, still stand under the control of a con- 
servative combination. One can reckon up a whole 
list of conservative elements which have all worked to- 
gether to retain the present establishment in church, 
state and society. There are first the more aggressive 
feudal reactionaries with the Berlin Kreuzzeitung as their 
mouthpiece, the same men who fought Bismarck until the 
Iron Chancellor forswore all liberal afl&liations. These 
men stand for the monarchy as long as the monarchy 
stands for them, but like their forbears, the ancient 
knights of the Marks of Brandenburg, whose defiance 
Frederick of Hohenzollern broke in the fifteenth century 
only after weary years of struggle, are ready to defend 
their claims if need be against the throne itself. It may 



156 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

be repeated that it was this class which made modern 
Prussia possible, and their devotion to Prussia knows no 
bounds. In the summer of 191 1, when the Imperial 
Diet admitted to the sisterhood of federated states the 
conquered provinces Alsace-Lorraine, the proviso was 
made that the three votes in the Bundesrat assigned to 
the new state should be valid only when cast against 
Prussia. This concession to the fear which Bavaria and 
the South German states entertain of Prussia's great 
power was bitterly opposed by the ultra-Conservatives. 
They stand as the representatives of that indomitable 
military and feudal spirit, steel girt and defiant as in the 
days when their ancestors won the North German plain 
from the Slavic tribes and built up the Prussian state 
amid the lance thrusts of hostile neighbors. Untouched 
in their feudal nature by the passage of time and un- 
tamed by the growth of radical elements in their midst, 
they are the most vigorous representatives of aristocracy 
to be found in Europe. Slightly less Prussian, but to 
the same general class belong the members of the some- 
what smaller party of so-called "Free Conservatives" 
(Reichspartei), a wing that is somewhat more ready to 
set devotion to the empire above feudal and particular- 
istic feeling. Like the ultra-wing, this party has grown 
smaller in the Reichstag, but still retains its influence in 
the Prussian Diet. Like the more intransigeant group, 
it too represents aristocratic prejudice and agrarian 
interest. 

Upon these conservative groups the government must 
depend, for they represent the backbone of the class 
upon which the monarchy relies for its existence and 
imperial Germany for its present government. Under 
the present constitution both in Prussia and the em- 
pire no government majority is long durable which does 
not contain these groups, because any other combina- 
tion would soon force the government to concessions 
which would be incompatible either with the basis on 



FEUDALISM AND AGRICULTURE 157 

which Prussian Germany rests or with the autocratic 
principle. The Clericals by their opposition to various 
ideas of national expansion and by the nature of the 
party itself could not be depended on to do the govern- 
ment's bidding without concessions such as the evan- 
gelical spirit of northern Germany would not tolerate. 
The National Liberals, who once formed the backbone 
of Bismarck's majorities, met the fate of all parties that 
try to follow a middle course : they dwindled through 
splits and defections until their representatives became 
too few for building a majority, though numerous enough 
to hold the balance of power as in the Reichstag of 191 2. 
The Radical party demands a responsible ministry as a 
condition for its continued support in internal affairs. 
The Social Democrats represent opposition to the mo- 
narchical principle itself. 

The growth of Germany's trade and population and 
the progress of its internal development point to the 
fact that the conservative alKance upon which the 
government rested for thirty years did not inflict serious 
injury upon the nation. The class itself has lofty ideals 
of national growth and power. It represents the military 
spirit, to be sure, but it represents also ideals of personal 
honor, which, freakish and anachronistic as they some- 
times are, are nevertheless refreshingly virile. The 
landed aristocracy in Germany is by no means decayed 
or decaying. It is fond of the soil; it has borne its 
various responsibilities both in government and in private 
life with a deep sense of duty. With its strong feeling 
of personal dignity, its deep-grained loyalty to Prussia's 
and Germany's feudal past, its physical vigor and passion 
for arms, it has formed a healthy and important balance 
to Germany's rapid industrial growth, with its accom- 
panying complexity of life. 

An American cannot come personally into contact with 
this class of the landed aristocracy without being re- 
minded of the planter class of the South, as it existed 



158 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

before the war between the states. Both are marked 
by the high sense of personal dignity which Edmund 
Burke ascribed to constant association with inferiors. 
Both rejoice in country Kfe and in the profession of arms : 
both bore heavy responsibiHties manfully. To both 
fell far greater political influence than the numbers of 
their constituents would properly entitle them to, and 
both used this influence with blind egotism to further 
agrarian interests. But there the parallel ceases. The 
Prusso-German aristocrat does not hold sway through 
any great unbroken territory. His political preserves 
even in East Prussia and Pomerania are interspersed with 
democratic and socialist strongholds. And he has learned 
to give way before advancing liberalism. The Reichstag 
of 191 2, in which the Conservative and Clerical forces 
were counterbalanced by Radicals and Socialists, fur- 
nished a sign that Conservative-agrarian influences in 
the empire were slowly losing ground ; and while there 
might be many ebbs and floods, any combination of more 
than momentary importance for imperial legislation must 
be built up with Liberal aid. It became evident that 
the sure growth of industry was weakening the lines of the 
feudal-agrarian combination and that government aid 
to the agrarians had for the present reached a limit. 
The march of liberalism into the Northeast appears cer- 
tain. It is becoming more and more apparent that 
any permanent help to the landed classes must come 
through the improvement of labor conditions and the 
increased adoption of mechanical means of production 
and not by making a crutch of legislation. 



CHAPTER VIII 

Liberalism and Industry 

The German Liberals resent the influence which the 
feudal classes along with the Clericals have exercised 
in hindering the development of parHamentary govern- 
ment. In the same way the commercial and industrial 
classes resent the tribute which they have been obliged 
to pay to the protected agrarians through the increased 
cost of hving. The feudal East has, however, not pro- 
duced the only autocrats with whom the German ministry 
has had to deal. The industrial districts of the West 
have brought forth a class of men whose attitude towards 
government is no less arrogant than that of the land- 
owners. In the manufacturing districts of the Rhine- 
land, Westphalia, Saxony and Silesia, there is practically 
the same spirit of domination in their own interest on the 
part of the captains of industry as has been shown to 
exist in the eastern provinces of Prussia, the only differ- 
ence being that the political influence of the industrialist 
has been negative rather than positive. Both East 
Elbian Junker and Westphalian industriahst have looked 
to the government to protect their interests by a tariff 
wall. Each has expected more or less direct help and 
much indirect help from the government in controlling 
his labor. In the East it has been social and dynastic 
influences and the rotten borough system that the 
landholder has relied upon; in the West it is wealth 
and the government's fear of the rising tide of socialism 
upon which the captain of industry has based his claims 
to recognition. 

159 



i6o THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

There is one difference, however. The influence of 
the feudal agrarian has steadily diminished through the 
industrial growth of the empire, which since the eighties 
has been slowly shifting the weight of Germany's popu- 
lation toward the west, and in spite of agrarian aggres- 
siveness it is plain that the feudal-conservative power 
must become less and less important in the nation. 
On the other hand the great manufacturers, with their 
rapidly mounting wealth and the growing power of their 
syndicate organization, cannot fail to have an increasing 
voice in public affairs until a new balance is reached. 

The traveller riding from Metz to Mannheim through 
the busy districts of Lorraine or from Dresden to Chem- 
nitz across the Saxon hills is never out of sight of factory 
chimneys. In the southwest, steel mills and engine 
factories, tile works and potteries thrust their blackened 
stacks across the landscape in every village ; in Saxony, 
spinning and weaving mills, chemical works and glass 
foundries stretch like a vast net north, south, east and 
west. In every city of North and South Germany, in 
the remotest valleys of Thuringia and the Riesengebirge 
of Silesia, the glazed brick factory walls and streams of 
laborers testify to the tremendous industrial progress 
of the country. If the Saarbriicken district of Lorraine 
reminds the American of one of our Lake cities and the 
Chemnitz region recalls the textile centres of eastern 
Massachusetts, the country lying to the northeast of 
Cologne seems like a multiphed Pittsburg. For a 
hundred miles the traveller from the Belgian border to 
Hanover passing through the northern arch of the Rhine 
province and the province of WestphaHa rides between 
almost unbroken Hues of foundries and factories. Here 
in the Westphalian hills the two great natural resources, 
coal and iron, lie side by side, and here the German 
genius for organization has celebrated its greatest 
triumphs. Great cities like Crefeld, Diisseldorf, Elber- 
feld. Barmen, Essen and Dortmund lie so close together 



LIBERALISM AND INDUSTRY i6i 

that an automobile will cover the entire circle of them 
in a day's easy ride, and they are linked together by 
a chain of busy municipalities which bid fair them- 
selves soon to become important cities. The growth of 
this region has been almost appalHng. The day is 
blackened by smoke pouring from a hundred stacks, the 
night is agleam with the angry light of thousands of coke 
ovens and blast furnaces, the earth trembles under the 
whizzing of cars laden with coal and iron. New fac- 
tories have constantly sprung up, equipped with the 
latest technical contrivances, and whole new streets of 
workingmen's dwellings lead out from every suburb 
far into the open country. In the early morning miles 
of becapped workingmen fill the walkways or bicycle 
through the streets, in the evening the earth fairly quakes 
under the tread of the army of labor taking its way home- 
ward. 

The tremendous industrial expansion of which these 
are the outward and visible sign began with a mild 
impetus in the early sixties, when the ideal of German 
unity under Prussian leadership seemed very far short 
of realization. With the foundation of the North Ger- 
man Federation the iron and steel industry began to give 
signs of really exploiting the vast resources which lay 
buried in Westphalia along the banks of the Ruhr, and 
the textile mills of Saxony entered on a stage of de- 
velopment independent of their former slavish imitation 
of the English. With the impetus which came after the 
war of 1870 and the turning into German coffers of the 
billion dollars war indemnity, German manufacturers 
began the triumphal march which continued until the 
war alarm of 1914. Setbacks there were, as in the panic 
year 1875, following the great speculation of the early 
days of the empire, and again in 190 1 and 1902, when the 
markets of the world were glutted with German products, 
but the sweep was ever forward. Fired by the enthusi- 
asm of the imperial idea, accustomed to great things in 



1 62 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

political life, the German mine owner and manufacturer 
arose from small undertakings, with limited capital and a 
servile imitation of English methods, to a point where in 
capital and initiative he could hold his own against the 
greatest magnates of British and American industry, while 
he had among his operatives resources in technical edu- 
cation which his English and American rival could not 
command. 

Some phases of the industrial expansion of Germany 
will form the subject matter of a later chapter ; for the 
present it is of interest to see the political effect which 
the concentration and organization of capital has had 
upon the nation. German captains of industry did not 
build up trusts in the American sense, but by a system 
of "cartels" and syndicates nearly the whole of Ger- 
man industry was organized for the purpose of fixing 
prices, limiting production, dividing the field of sale 
and distributing goods, so that the results were prac- 
tically the same as if the capital of the various concerns 
were pooled. Especially in coal and iron mining and in 
the steel industry the process of syndicating went to the 
point where the trade was absolutely controlled and the 
middle-man practically ehminated. The great genera- 
tion of organizers who built up this system of cartels 
and sjoidicates is still in the saddle. The history of 
German industry is as yet too brief for the first group of 
creative spirits to have passed away, — the men who to a 
considerable extent resemble in energy and will power 
and executive ability the generation of Americans who 
after the war between the states laid the foundation of 
our steel and iron industries and built the railways from 
coast to coast. More and more industrial power became 
centred in the hands of a small group of men. At the 
beginning of the new century three banks had become 
practically supreme in German financial affairs. It 
was estimated in 1906 by conservative economists that 
the threads of the big business of the entire empire 



LIBERALISM AND INDUSTRY 163 

passed through the fingers of not more than fifty men. 
The whole Rhine-Westphalian system of collieries by 
1907 was under the control of six capitalists. 

It is perfectly patent that even a government in which 
the monarchical principle plays so large a part could not 
escape the influence of business men like these. Business 
and politics find themselves as necessarily allied in Ger- 
many as in other lands. We have seen how great the 
influence of the Conservative-agrarian element was in 
bringing about fiscal legislation. The influence of the 
industrial aristocracy on the government was less noisily 
exerted perhaps, but just as effectively. This aristocracy 
is a creation of the age of large capital, many of the 
families, like the Krupps, having come up in two or 
three generations from the humblest beginnings to a 
point where they have become allied in marriage with 
the most exclusive feudal circles. Not a few of these 
families have been ennobled, several of them enjoying 
the quite especial favor of the sovereign. Indeed, it is 
not too much to say that none of the military caste in 
Prussia, not even the Conservative Von Heydebrand, 
whose ruthless leadership of the feudal forces won for 
him the title of "imcrowned king of Prussia," has had a 
more forceful influence on the ministry than self-made 
capitalists like August Thyssen, the iron king, or Arthur 
von Gwinner, the head of the Deutsche Bank, or Karl 
Helfferich, the clever banker who was entrusted with the 
financial organization of the war, or Ballin, the Jewish 
manager of the Hamburg-American Line. It was not 
merely the possession of great wealth and business power 
which insured them the personal patronage of the crown 
and the supporting hand of government, but the quite 
correct feeling on the part of the imperial and Prussian 
ministry that these industrial and commercial barons 
have the future of Germany in their hands, and the ad- 
ditional fact that they, as much as the feudal nobility, 
are the sworn enemies of the Social Democracy. With 



1 64 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

the imperiousness of self-made men, the barons of in- 
dustry and commerce have been nearly all foes of or- 
ganized labor and bitterly determined to remain "masters 
in their own house" as far as the conduct of their own 
business is concerned. 

The influence of such men on politics has been exerted 
independently of party. Large capitalists organize po- 
litical influence, not political parties ; and big business 
in Germany as in America has found it possible to remain 
on good terms with nearly all of the political factions. 
Indeed its direct influence on government has made it 
to a certain extent independent of the political game. 
Its restraining hand has not been used with the brutal 
openness with which the feudal agrarian interests are 
accustomed to exert pressure, but it has made itself felt 
sharply enough. The results of this restraint on govern- 
ment have shown themselves in many ways : in the 
repeated refusal of the Prussian ministry to bring in a 
measure fixing a ten-hour day of labor on government 
work, although on certain kinds of public works an 
eight-hour day was already in operation ; in the refusal 
of the imperial ministry to lower the age Hmit for inva- 
lidity in the revision of the old age pension bill in 191 1, 
and a similar refusal to extend the period of enforced 
rest for l5dng-in women. In these and similar cases the 
ministers recognized the justice of the demands of labor, 
but as Count Posadowsky, the able Prussian Minister 
of the Interior, declared in 1906, they were "unwilling 
to add to the burdens of industry." There is no doubt 
that the gifted Silesian aristocrat spoke in perfectly good 
faith, for he more fully perhaps than any of his colleagues 
understood the demands of labor ; nevertheless, it may 
safely be said that the need which the government felt 
of the full support of the great industrialists in the 
struggle against the Social Democracy was the chief 
reason why it did not find it expedient to grant these 
reasonable demands. 



LIBERALISM AND INDUSTRY 165 

Far less important is the influence of large business 
interests on the Reichstag and the various state parlia- 
ments.^ Indeed, were the Reichstag a really parhamen- 
tary body, instead of being merely a consulting com- 
mittee in matters of legislation, there is no doubt that 
since 1907 a majority could have been found for some 
radical restraint of the syndicating process, which made 
such progress in Germany after the beginning of the 
century. ' This system, by which the territory of dis- 
tribution and sale is divided out among the various 
members of the manufacturers' syndicates, production 
restrained and prices fixed and maintained in times of 
over-production by selling the overplus abroad at prices 
lower than those obtaining at home, was viewed with 
suspicion by all poKtical parties, even by the National 
Liberals, who stand perhaps closer to the industrial 
interests than any other fraction. Such remedies as 
lowering the tariff were rejected, for with the exception of 
the radical groups, German economists and politicians 
have become thoroughly committed to the protectionist 
ideal, and it is doubtful even if the Radicals and Social 
Democrats, had responsibihty fallen upon them for 
lowering duties on manufactured products, would have 
shown any enthusiasm for this part of their official party 

^ It is growing, however. The German Manufacturers' Alliance 
{Zentralverhand deutscher Industrielle) has taken a more and more active 
part in legislative campaigns. At the annual gathering of the Alliance 
in 19 1 2 it was reported that at the Reichstag election in January of that 
year, 1 20 candidates — in the main probably members of the National 
Liberal and "Imperial" parties — were supported by the electoral 
funds of the organization, 41 of them being elected. In return for this 
financial assistance the candidates were obliged to pledge themselves 
to vote according to the policies of the Alliance. It is worth noting 
that as in the case of the Agrarian League, no secret was made of the 
determination to protect business interests by influencing the election. 
A promise of still further commercialization of political life was the 
union in the summer of 19 13 of the Association just named with the 
Alliance of the Middle Classes {Reichsdeiitscher Mittelstandsverhand) 
and the Agrarian League into a League of the Producing Classes {Bund 
der schaffenden Stande), with the avowed object of fighting further 
socialistic legislation. 



1 66 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

programs. The two remedies for the restraint of trade 
that the syndicate system brings with it which have been 
most zealously pushed forward are a temporary sus- 
pension of tariff duties, in the case of unjustifiably high 
prices or a shortage, and the acquisition of industrial 
undertakings by the government. Both of these policies 
met the approval of Liberal and Radical fractions in the 
Reichstag and naturally of course of the Social Democrats. 
A suspension of tariff duties is, however, a blade that 
cuts both ways; for such a suspension might easily 
lead to a demand, already frequently made, for a sus- 
pension of duties on meat and grain. It is very difl&cult 
to say when the moment for such action has arrived. 
In 1907 and again in 191 2 a tremendous agitation was 
carried on in Germany over the lack of meat, and the 
government was besieged to bring in a bill admitting 
Danish and Austrian meat free. Violent articles in the 
Radical and Social Democratic press, and even in the 
Liberal papers, and violent speeches in the Reichstag 
and Prussian Landtag led to investigations, undertaken 
rather reluctantly by the government. In 1907 the net 
result was a declaration that no lack of meat existed; 
in 191 2 some concessions were made admitting frozen 
meat from abroad. The other alternative, government 
purchase of industries, is a part of the Social Democratic 
program, but the German government has never shown 
itself averse to socialistic undertakings when it seemed 
practicable to carry them out. The purchase of the 
Hercynia potash mine by the Prussian government in 
1908 was greeted with enthusiasm by almost all political 
parties as an important experiment. In matters of 
business organization the Germans are very clear sighted 
and they have shown a determination not to part with 
their birthright to the syndicates. 

The field in which the syndicating process has been 
carried to the furthest point of development is in the 
coal mining industry. Here in the Rhine Westphalian 



LIBERALISM AND INDUSTRY 167 

district it has been said that six men control the entire 
production. Naturally the wealth and power centred 
in a few hands has been used to defend politically the 
interests of the mine owners : it was alleged in the 
Reichstag in connection with the coal miners' strike of 
1907 that the head of the coal syndicate possessed greater 
poUtical power than the minister of commerce. This 
strike of 1907 for higher wages and better working con- 
ditions was vigorously waged not only by the Socialist 
labor unions but by the CathoKc unions as well. Popu- 
lar prejudice against industrial coercion flamed to fever 
heat. Collections for the strikers netted considerable 
funds. The government showed itself favorable to the 
workingmen in many ways, and the radical wing of the 
Prussian Diet urged the nationalization of all the coal 
mines. The strike ended with a victory for the unions. 
That a similar strike in the spring of 191 2 did not end 
in a similar way was due to the political situation and 
illustrates in a rare way the power of conservative in- 
terests in Prussia-Germany. The strike of 1907 came at 
a time when the government was seeking to carry out 
a great national program of colonial development and 
fleet-building and found it necessary to placate the 
Clerical champions of labor; the strike of 191 2 followed 
closely on an election in which Radicals and Social 
Democrats, working frequently together, had defeated 
the forces of the National Liberals and Clericals and 
Conservatives. In many respects this strike of 191 2 
was a typical political movement, and the attitude of 
the government and the various parties towards it was 
illuminating for social and political conditions. It was 
called by the Social Democratic unions, who were 
assisted by the smaller groups of organized labor, the 
so-called Hirsch-Duncker, or non-political, unions and 
the Polish unions. It was estimated that in all two 
hundred thousand men laid down their tools in the 
Rhine-Westphalian district, to which the strike was 



1 68 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

mainly confined. Following, as we have seen, a general 
election in which the SociaKst forces had made great 
gains at the expense of the Clericals and Conservatives, 
it was impossible to keep the strike from having a 
political complexion. In addition, the great English 
coal strike was just at its culmination and the charge 
that the German Socialists had ordered their strike as a 
part of an international attack on the propertied classes 
found ready belief in all middle class circles. "The 
German coal industry, which could otherwise absorb a 
part of the English market and win a vantage ground 
perhaps for all time, is being sacrificed to Socialist inter- 
nationalism ! " 

There was not much doubt of the justice of the 
economic claims of the miners, which included a 15 per 
cent increase in wages, shorter working hours and other 
concessions, such as the establishment of intelligence 
offices on the part of the workingmen themselves and a 
month's notice to workingmen tenants in mine cottages 
before eviction. While much sympathy was expressed 
for the grievances of the men, the national dislike of the 
autocratic coal barons was qualified by a fear of further 
Social Democratic successes. By a hard struggle the 
Clerical leaders succeeded in preventing the "Christian" 
or Catholic unions from joining the strike, and had them 
sign a manifesto declaring their willingness to go to work 
in case they were protected from violence. The Prus- 
sian government, which was in 1907 distinctly hostile to 
the operators, in 191 2 refused to offer its mediation to 
the contestants and showed itself willing to use every 
weapon to crush disorder. Of course with a large element 
of strike breakers from the rival Christian unions the 
opportunities for cracking heads among the restless 
mining population of centres like Essen, Barmen and 
Bochum lay right at hand, and there is no denying the 
fact that the Socialist strikers were guilty of many in- 
stances of brutality. The police, which in the larger 



LIBERALISM AND INDUSTRY 169 

places are directly under the orders of the Ministry of the 
Interior, acted with the energy and thoroughness for 
which the Prussian police are well known. Popular 
meetings were forbidden in many places, taverns where 
the strikers held their gatherings were closed or threat- 
ened with loss of Kcense, strikers were ruthlessly sabred 
on slight provocation. Despite the protests of the 
Prussian Minister of the Interior that the government 
was acting merely to protect property and with entire 
impartiality, the Radical and Socialist members of the 
Reichstag and the Prussian Landtag fairly boiled with 
rage. When the government decKned to offer arbitra- 
tion to the contending parties, the Prussian Minister of 
the Interior was denounced in parliament as an "attor- 
ney for the striking operators." The head of the coal 
syndicate was called the "uncrowned king of Prussia," 
and it was declared that he had threatened to "drown 
the strike in blood." When it became evident that the 
strike could not be won in the face of the government 
and of the Catholic unions, the Socialist leaders called 
their well-drilled adherents back to work. 

In this struggle of conservative against radical forces 
it is of interest to see how the National Liberal party 
stood. As the successors of the old Liberal party, 
which had hoped to reform Prussia on the lines of British 
parKamentary government, one would expect that they 
would have sought to intermediate between a feudal- 
clerical conservatism and an ail-too rapid progress tow- 
ard socialism : as the representatives of a constitutional 
and limited monarchy on the one side and a strongly 
patriotic national spirit on the other, it was to them 
that friends of constitutional progress would naturally 
look. But in the parliamentary struggles that took 
place in connection with the coal strike, National Liberal 
sympathy went to the coal operators. This is typical. 
The party which fell heir to the enthusiasm of 1848 and 
which should have been the best arbitrator between 



I70 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

capital and labor, had not been able to resist the dis- 
solving power of economic forces, any more than any 
other party. After the split on the tariff question in 
1879 and further losses in 1880, the party became emas- 
culated. Its more progressive members had gone into 
the ranks of the Radicals (Freisinnigen, cf. page 118), 
and while those who remained behind still claimed to be 
the representatives of a strongly national party, the 
lack of a definite social program drove them more and 
more into a position of dignified reaction. No party in 
Germany can claim so great a number from the intellec- 
tual classes : in the National Liberal ranks are to be 
found distinguished industrialists, university professors, 
eminent professional men and scientists. There are no 
better speakers in the Reichstag than the National 
Liberals, and in times of national crisis, they always 
distinguish themselves by their defense of the national 
honor. 

In spite of their enthusiasm for a greater Germany, 
the various elements in liberalism have lacked the 
cementing force of some economic interest, and all of 
the brilKance of orators and statesmen like Bassermann 
and Paasche has not been able to replace this lack. 
Manufacturers and merchants, professors and scientists 
have not the common financial interest which has lent 
such vigor to the advance of agrarian and socialist. 
The heterogeneous nature of the party has forced it to 
take a middle course and given to its attitude on all ques- 
tions not connected directly with imperial policies an 
air of uncertainty. In general, its economic poUcy is 
that of the large industriahsts, who compose an in- 
fluential part of its membership : it stands for a protec- 
tive tariff on German industries, opposes additions to the 
duties on foodstuffs, and advocates the regulation of 
imperial finances through income and inheritance taxes. 
It has on most occasions opposed feudal privileges in the 
army and the bureaucracy and fought for a revision of 



LIBERALISM AND INDUSTRY 171 

the Prussian constitution. Representing the new aris- 
tocracy of industriahsm, it has opposed to the Junker 
the Hberal ideas of a constitutional monarchy, and has 
in the main striven to impose on the will of the monarch 
the bonds of a responsible ministry. 

All of these things, however, have been a matter rather 
of program and of forensic display than of actual parHa- 
mentary tactics. The reason for this Hes right at hand, 
and is to be found in the fear of the Social Democrats, 
a feeling which has driven the National Liberals and the 
upper middle classes in general into a reactionary posi- 
tion. The hostihty is not merely that of the monarchist 
and the defender of the constitutional state to the party 
of social revolution, but it has in it much of the class 
feeHng of the capitahst. It is not only that the Social 
Democrats have been in middle class eyes international- 
ists, enemies of that Fatherland whose greatness and 
prosperity the National Liberals have regarded as their 
own peculiar work, they have represented also the serried 
ranks of organized labor, which are always drawn up in 
line of battle against the captains and lieutenants of 
industry. Thus the old Liberals have been forced more 
and more towards the Right. In second ballotings the 
National Liberal electors, so far as they could be con- 
trolled by their leaders, have regularly voted for the 
Conservative and even the Clerical candidate in prefer- 
ence to the Social Democrat ; in the imperial and national 
parHaments these representatives of the middle class 
have more than once been manoeuvred into a position 
where they were obliged to oppose policies to which 
they were deeply committed in order to avoid carrying 
them through with Social Democratic votes. Thus, 
while in 1909 the party supported the inheritance tax 
and retired from the coalition with the Conservatives on 
this account, yet when an opportunity came in 191 2 to 
force the government to introduce a bill providing for 
such a tax to cover the new mihtary and naval budget. 



172 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

the National Liberal leaders declined to take advantage 
of the majority for such a measure which actually existed 
in the Reichstag and voted with the Conservatives and 
Clericals rather than ally themselves with the enemies 
of the capitalistic state. 

It Hes in the nature of liberal parties to resist discipline. 
Reform and the struggle against privilege bring strong 
individualities to the front and tend to produce theories 
and programs that will not harmonize. There have 
been many signs that in spite of the conciliatory clever- 
ness of their leader, Bassermann, the old National Liberal 
party is once more in process of losing its radical wing. 
Half Hberal, half democratic, the party teetered between 
progress and reaction until two distinct factions formed 
which submitted themselves with growing ill grace to the 
discipline of the party convention. The tendency to 
reaction, which manifested itself in opposition to the 
Social Democrats and was ready to go to the limit in the 
repression of labor manifestations, resulted in the forma- 
tion of the Old Liberal AlKance, which favored coopera- 
tion with the Conservatives in matters of social legisla- 
tion; the democratic wing, standing for an aggressive 
program in cooperation with Radical and Socialist, or- 
ganized in 1 90 1 a "Young Liberal Association," out of 
which has come a strengthening of advanced liberalism. 

The dream of 1909 and the years immediately follow- 
ing of a grand coalition of all liberal and radical forces 
"from Bassermann to Bebel" proved only a dream. 
The Reichstag of 191 2, in which the National Liberals 
held the balance of power between Clericals and Con- 
servatives on the one side and Radicals and Socialists on 
the other, showed that a liberal-socialist alliance was 
still impossible. It did, however, show the possibility 
of the working together of democratic-socialist forces. 
In almost all the major questions, both in house and 
committee, the representatives of the Radicals {Fort- 
schrittliche Volkspartei) and the Social Democrats found 



LIBERALISM AND INDUSTRY 173 

themselves aligned together, except in the question of 
the national defenses, on which, until the breaking out 
of war, the Socialists maintained their traditional atti- 
tude of negation. 

The Radical Party is a good illustration of the de- 
ficiency in organizing power inherent in reform parties, 
and also of Bismarck's assertion that the question in 
German politics is not so much one of the theories as of 
Paul and Cephas. Composed at first mostly of South 
Germans, who brought into the new empire the repub- 
lican enthusiasm of 1848, it was an unimportant fraction 
in German political life until after the economic split in 
the Hberal ranks. It emerged from the reorganization of 
liberalism as the German Radical Party {Deutsche 
Freisinnige Partei), and became after 1884 distinctly a 
party of protest, forming under the clever tactician 
Eugene Richter, a constant stumbKng block in the path 
of Bismarck. As old liberalism went to pieces on the 
tariff, so the Radical party split on the question of na- 
tional growth. In 1893 it divided on the question of 
national defenses, both wings still advocating a poKcy 
of free trade and parliamentary government. After a 
long and weary campaign all of the radical-democratic 
elements were finally united in 1910 into the Progressive 
People's Party {FortschriUliche Volkspartei), in which 
North German monarchists and not a few South Ger- 
man republicans agreed to bury minor differences in 
support of a national and democratic policy. Represent- 
ing as it does the commercial rather than the manufactur- 
ing classes, it has stood for freedom of trade, although 
it is doubtful whether the Radicals any more than the 
Social Democrats would on a pinch support any aban- 
donment of Germany's protective policy. With a con- 
siderable portion of the trading classes behind it, the 
party has many aims in common with the SociaKsts, and 
has not hesitated to support Social Democratic candidates 
in the bye-elections nor socialistic policies in parliament. 



174 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

It is heartily opposed to feudal privileges in army and 
bureaucracy, and as it contains many men of anti- 
monarchical principles, it has been less inclined to take 
fright at the blustering attacks of the Socialists on 
royalty. While it does not count among its members 
so many brilliant intellectuals as the National Liberals, 
it has boasted of many first-class economists and statis- 
ticians, like George Gothein, and publicists, like Fried- 
rich Naumann ; and some of the best organized and most 
widely circulated daily papers, particularly certain 
journals under Jewish influences, like the Frankfurter 
Zeitung and the Berliner Tageblatt, support either directly 
or indirectly the Radical program. With the growth of 
the national spirit among middle class Germans, the 
party lost something of its "Uttle German" spirit, and 
after 1907 became committed to a policy of increasing 
the national defenses through strengthening the army 
and navy and to a support of colonial interests. The 
recession from doctrinaire radicalism brought immedi- 
ately a gain in strength and prestige. The readiness of 
the Radical leaders in general and bye-elections to co- 
operate with the Social Democrats won further parlia- 
mentary seats and gave the party an important strategic 
position in German political life. Thus, as we have seen 
(page 136), in the Reichstag of 191 2 two members of the 
Progressive People's Party were chosen to the presidency 
of the Imperial Diet. 



PART III 
THE EMPIRE'S PROBLEMS 



CHAPTER IX 

The Proletarian in Politics 

If we were obliged to cover with one word the develop- 
ment of Germany in the four decades between the two 
great wars, that word would certainly be "socialism." 
It is not merely that in philosophy, literature and art 
the welfare of the masses is the leading motif running 
through the eighties and nineties until it became lost 
after 1900 in the swelling music of national ambition. 
In the field of political economy also socialistic ideas 
marked the age. They began by conquering the 
professorial chairs in the universities in the seventies, 
where such "socialists of the chair" as Adolf Wagner 
of the university of Berlin set their stamp on the genera- 
tion of poKtical economists which followed the war with 
France, and they found expression in the compulsory 
insurance measures and similar legislation of the follow- 
ing decade. Such ideas were indeed nothing new in 
Germany since the sixteenth century, when cities such 
as Augsburg and Strasburg were models of a hard and 
fast organization, in which capital played a small part and 
the workers formed the commonwealth on the principle 
of a closed shop, where communal undertakings largely 
supplanted private enterprise and every detail of hfe, 
including the details of food and dress, was fixed by 
law. The paternalism of the petty despotisms which 
preceded German unity had disciplined the Germans to 
Hve under efficient supervision, and the ideals of the 
Manchester school of British economists did not take 
lasting hold on German economic life. 

N 177 



178 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

Socialism then grew in Germany on well-prepared 
soil. State ownership of railroad and telegraph had 
come naturally soon after the coming of these utilities, 
and municipal control of many forms of enterprise de- 
scended as a tradition from the later middle ages. That 
the individual should look to the government to provide 
for his welfare and that state and communal funds 
should supplant private capital in many undertakings 
had long been the case when Bismarck undertook his 
compulsory insurance policy in the eighties. This 
program was, as we have seen, an effort to strike the 
ground from beneath the Social Democrats by removing 
some of the causes of proletarian dissatisfaction. Here 
and there Bismarck's successors went further on the 
road, with such measures as the purchase of the 
Hercynia potash mine (cf. page 166). That they did 
not go still further in this and other fields of state 
socialism was due in large measure to the existence of 
the Social Democratic party. This Ishmael in Ger- 
many's poHtical Hfe by its very advocacy of measures 
made them impossible for the government. 

What is it that has made the Socialist unfitted to be 
an ally and unwelcome as a coworker with nearly all 
other parties? What is there in the advocacy by the 
Social Democrats of any reform that has caused not 
only the East Elbian Junker and the Westphahan 
manufacturer, but even the National Liberal physician 
and shopkeeper to look askance at it? The answer is 
to be found both in the doctrinaire character of the 
party and in the violence of SociaKst editors and orators. 
Karl Lamprecht has shown that all German political 
parties are antiquated in that all cling to formulas and 
doctrines that have outlived their applicability to 
present-day affairs. In this sense the Social Democratic 
party is the most antiquated and the least opportunist. 
In this has lain its strength as a class party and its 
weakness in electoral and parHamentary strategy. 



THE PROLETARIAN IN POLITICS 179 

Beginning with the removal of the coercive laws in 1890, 
it cast at all national elections the largest vote of any 
party, and after 1903 held under its discipline nearly 
one-third of all the electors to the national parliament, 
more than all the other Liberal fractions combined. 
Nevertheless it exercised less influence on legislation 
than any other of the major groups in the empire. To 
understand the reason for this one must glance at the 
development of socialism as a poKtical force. 

When in 1867 Friedrich Liebknecht and August 
Bebel were elected to the first Reichstag of the new-born 
North German Confederation, they found ready at 
hand both the gospel of socialism in the works of Karl 
Marx and the needed fighting force in the German 
Workingmen's Party {Allgemeiner Deutscher Arbeiter- 
Verein), which had been founded four years earlier by 
Ferdinand Lassalle. Two years later at the famous 
Eisenach Convention Liebknecht and Bebel called the 
Social Democratic Workingmen's Party into existence, 
on a platform built of Marx' theory of the destructive 
rule of capital and his call to the workingmen of all 
lands to unite, and finally in 1875 the followers of Las- 
salle forsook their nationalistic ideals and were won over 
to the internationahsm of the Marxists. Immediately 
the triumphal march of the Social Democrats began, a 
march which has continued with few halts since. Aided 
by the hardships brought on by the financial crises of 
the seventies, the Marxian theories of the misery caused 
by the capitalistic state and the exploitation of the work- 
ing class through the capitahstic organization of society 
found eager acceptance in all quarters of industrial 
Germany. Already in 1876 there were twenty-four 
papers and journals published in the interest of the 
party with nearly one hundred thousand subscribers : 
by the next year the number of party periodicals had 
increased to forty-one, and that year the party cast 
nearly hah a million votes and elected twelve members 



i8o THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

to the national legislature. From that time the Social 
Democracy kept pace closely with the forward move- 
ment of industrial Germany. Wherever factories sprang 
up and workmen came to live together, the theories of 
Marx took root. The workingmen were organized into 
Socialist unions, which became at once fighting units 
in the industries and the elections; with the capacity 
for organization so characteristic of an industrial age 
and of German society in particular, the Social Democ- 
racy was solidified by the establishment of central 
bureaus under the control of secretaries. These latter 
quickly developed into a class of experienced leaders, 
at once clever agitators in the industries and skillful 
strategists in political campaigns. 

Bismarck watched the rise of the party and its often 
unscrupulous means of agitation with growing distrust. 
He put no confidence in the alleged peaceful program 
of socialism : for him the party bore nothing but red 
revolution on its banners. In 1878 two attempts were 
made on the life of Emperor William which were un- 
justly ascribed to the effect of sociahst agitation; and 
the Chancellor took advantage of the popular outcry 
to dissolve the Liberal Reichstag and appeal to the elec- 
tors on an anti-socialist program. The result was the 
enactment of rigid laws forbidding Socialist propaganda. 
The following ten years, 1880 to 1890, were for the party 
a period of almost subterranean existence. Clubs 
were suppressed, newspapers and journals confiscated, 
many of the leaders, Liebknecht and Bebel among them, 
went to prison. In spite of prosecution and imprison- 
ment, however, the propaganda went straight ahead. 
Political clubs were reorganized as singing societies and 
bowling clubs and the party organization was perpet- 
uated by these and by the trade unions, which con- 
tinued to spread like a vast network throughout in- 
dustrial Germany. During the ten years of the anti- 
socialist laws the total vote of the party increased, a 



THE PROLETARIAN IN POLITICS i8i 

larger number of deputies was chosen to the Reichstag, 
and more important still, the inner organization and 
solidity of the party gained tremendously under per- 
secution. This was shown immediately on the expiration 
of the anti-socialist laws in 1890. In that year the 
party cast nearly one and one-half million votes in the 
national elections, and became thereby the strongest 
party in the empire. In 1898 the Social Democratic 
vote had risen to two milHons, in 1907 to three and one 
quarter millions, in 191 2 to more than four and one- 
quarter millions, more than one-third of all votes cast 
in the imperial elections of that year. 

The great Chancellor was, however, too far-seeing a 
statesman to think that the mere forbidding of socialist 
propaganda would stop the growth of socialism, which 
to his mind was only revolution in disguise. He set 
out, as we have seen, to cut the ground from beneath 
the feet of the proletarian agitators by a system of legis- 
lation which should ban from the empire the direst 
poverty by insuring to the working class compensation 
in case of injury and care in sickness and old age. These 
needs, which were outlined in an imperial message of 
1 88 1, formed the basis of debate and experiment through 
the following eight years and were finally met in the 
various compulsory insurance measures which, so to 
speak, set their stamp upon Germany's internal politics 
in the eighties. In the Workingmen's Compensation 
or Accident Insurance Act of 1884, the burden of insur- 
ance was laid entirely upon the employer; the cost of 
the Sick Insurance Act of 1883 fell upon both employer 
and employee; for carrying out the provisions of the 
Old Age Pension Act of 1889, the empire joined with 
both capital and labor in providing for the veterans of 
labor. By this legislation, which though several times 
amended in minor parts, has remained essentially the 
same, Germany took a long step in the direction of 
state socialism and assumed the first place among 



1 82 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

nations in the protection of its army of labor. Both 
Radical and Socialist have found much to criticise in the 
laws, and the amendments which reformers suggested 
should long ago have received attention at the hands of 
the government ; nevertheless, with all of their imperfec- 
tions, the compulsory insurance acts have been a guiding 
star for the social legislation of other lands and one of the 
brightest decorations on the bosom of modern Germania. 
They are no less a superb monument to the liberal view 
and modern spirit of Bismarck in social legislation. 

But they did not win over the Socialists. The rep- 
resentatives of the fourth estate accepted the socialistic 
laws of the eighties not as a gift from the hands of be- 
nevolent capital, but as a right conceded through the fear 
of the rising strength of the proletariat. There is 
evidence that the old Chancellor had wearied of the 
struggle to win the working classes to a national and 
patriotic spirit and that at the expiration of the anti- 
socialist laws in 1890 he was preparing a stroke against 
the constitution, which by the aboHtion of manhood 
suffrage should undo the work of 1866 and exclude the 
non-propertied classes from a share in government 
(cf. page 127). However, young Emperor William 
thought otherwise, and with the fall of Bismarck, legisla- 
tion against the Social Democracy was dropped and the 
Emperor sought to accomplish by concihation what 
suppressive laws had failed to do. He summoned an 
international congress in Berlin to consider measures 
for the further welfare of the working classes, and out- 
lined for adoption various propositions, such as a com- 
plete Sunday holiday, which had been advocated in 
the Socialist platform. But the effort to win the 
workingmen to fealty to monarch and Fatherland by 
kindness broke against the hard class consciousness 
of the fourth estate. No royal enticements could pre- 
vail against the teachings of Marx, ably and speciously 
interpreted by SociaUst speakers, no words of the sover- 



THE PROLETARIAN IN POLITICS 183 

eign could make progress against the class feeling which 
had been bred in the industrial proletariat for two de- 
cades in trade union, tavern debating club and Socialist 
journal. From that day on the crown and indeed all 
of the upper classes and a large part of the middle classes 
in Germany parted company with the proletariat. 
Henceforth every representative of the existing organiza- 
tion of society from the sovereign to the Rhenish crock- 
ery dealer denounced the Social Democrats as enemies 
of the Fatherland. But whether ridiculed as a "transi- 
tory phase" or threatened with a holy war of extermina- 
tion by "all lovers of God and Fatherland," the Social- 
ist forces marched on in ever increasing numbers, a 
soHd phalanx of industrial workers, soaked with the 
doctrines of Marx and Engel and ably led by labor 
secretary and editor. 

In his opposition to the monarchy and the entire 
capitalistic state, the Social Democrat included of 
course the army, under feudal and capitalistic leader- 
ship. Nowhere, however, has the German miHtary 
spirit found better expression than in the organization 
and discipline of the Social Democratic party. Who 
could watch the orderly, shoulder to shoulder march of 
tens of thousands of workingmen through the streets of 
Berlin on the occasion of the burial of a leader or on the 
anniversary of the "victims of March," the revolution- 
ists who fell in the street fighting of March 1848, with- 
out seeing in imagination these same men clad in the 
blue and red or khaki of active soldiers? And who 
could see the eyes-to-the-front, fingers-on-the-trouser- 
seam carriage with which the individual workman 
follows his leader in strike or electoral campaign with- 
out recalling the Prussian mihtary discipHne? In 
August 191 1 at Treptow, a suburb of BerUn, a mighty 
Sociahst demonstration was made against the threatened 
war with France and England over the Morocco affair. 
A vast crowd of men and women, estimated at eighty 



1 84 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

thousand, gathered on a Sunday afternoon about a 
tribune to hear their leaders denounce war as a diabolical 
game at which the capitalist must win and the proleta- 
rian lose. Only a few of the mighty audience could 
hear a word of the orators, but all stood at respectful 
attention in the intense heat until the speeches were 
over and then at a given signal waved their arms in a 
mighty storm wave, voting affirmatively on a resolution 
which protested in the name of labor against the 
threatened war. And throughout the day not one 
case of disorder, scarcely even a chance hard word at 
an over-officious policeman, among the tens of thou- 
sands of workingmen and workingwomen who spent 
the hot Sunday journeying back and forth from their 
homes in almost all parts of Greater Berlin ! 

The same iron discipline that has taught moulder 
and stoker and street paver that he owes it to his class 
to suppress even a natural outburst of resentment, be- 
cause it may give the representatives of feudalism and 
capitalism an advantage, holds sway over leader and 
editor. The annual party convention, the Parteitag, 
is the court of last resort, before which even those high- 
est in the councils of the party must appear and justify 
their actions. Prominent Socialists, including some of 
the leading parliamentarians of the party and the editors 
of such journals as Vorwarts and the Sozialistische 
Monatshefte, have been called upon to defend the 
orthodoxy of their faith, and prominent leaders have 
been unceremoniously thrust out of the party. It 
became an accepted canon that when a man found that 
his position, reached after scientific inquiry, was no 
longer that of the party, and when he could not persuade 
the party to accept his position, he was by that very 
fact no longer a Social Democrat. This tyranny of the 
majority was due not merely to a democratic intoler- 
ance of strong individualities, it proceeded also from the 
extreme doctrinarianism of the party. 



THE PROLETARIAN IN POLITICS 185 

This doctrinariamsm is the very bone of the Social 
Democracy. No orthodox theologian of years agone 
ever clung to the verbal inspiration of Holy Writ with 
greater zeal than Socialist orator and editor and pri- 
vate soldier have held to every jot and tittle of the 
Erfurt Platform. This declaration of faith was adopted 
in 1 891, soon after the expiration of the anti-sociahst 
laws, and has had no official revision since. It could 
not be expected, however, that the Marxian theories, 
as enunciated in that instrument, would stand un- 
impaired by the experience of the passing years, and 
even the most devout Socialist must acknowledge that 
some planks in the Erfurt Platform have been shown 
to be fallacies by the industrial history of the past 
few decades in Germany. Of none is this more strik- 
ingly true than of the so-called "iron law of wages," 
according to which the condition of the workingman 
under the capitahstic system must constantly grow 
worse. This dogma has been absolutely contradicted 
by the facts. The general condition of industrial labor 
in Germany has constantly grown better, and as the 
years have passed not a few of the proletariat have be- 
come themselves members of the capitalistic class. 

These conditions were recognized quite early by Social 
Democrats of more liberal training. The first bold 
reformer to attempt to bring sociafism down from the 
domain of dreams to economic reality was Edward 
Bernstein in a memorable brochure published in 1899 
{Die Voraussetzungen des Sozialismus und die Aufgaben 
der Sozialdemokratie) } The author, who had suffered in 
his own person for his adherence to the Marxian faith 
in the days of the anti-Socialist laws, proposed a revi- 
sion of the old Marxian theories in the light of present- 
day economic and social life, "the development of the 
theory and practice of the Social Democracy in an evolu- 
tionistic sense." The first point of his attack was the 
^ The Basis of Socialism and the Task of the Social Democracy. 



1 86 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

time-honored premise of the "iron law of wages." The 
condition of the working classes, he contended, is not 
growing worse but better. Furthermore, not all means 
of production are to be socialized, as is demanded in 
the Erfurt Platform, but only land and the larger means 
of production, and as a very important reservation, 
one must avoid anything which would injure the nation 
in its competition for trade with foreign countries. This 
attack on the major premise of the Erfurt Platform and 
this modification of its first article instantly called into 
the ring a host of defenders of socialistic orthodoxy. 
August Bebel, the parliamentary generalissimo, Karl 
Kautsky, the learned dogmatist, and others rushed to 
arms in defense of the Marxian theories and the battle 
was on between "Radicals" and "Revisionists," the 
former ably led by Kautsky in the Neue Zeit, the latter 
by Bernstein in the Sozialistische Monatshefte. The 
struggle reached its culmination in the Dresden conven- 
tion of 1903, a convention which will long be remembered 
in German political annals as the highwater mark of 
violence and "rough-house" tactics. The result was a 
defeat for the "Revisionists," less on scientific than on 
tactical grounds, the "Radicals" claiming that any con- 
cession to the "middle-class parties," whether in theory 
or practice, would result in weakening the feeling of 
class consciousness upon which the Social Democracy 
is built. 

In the meantime, however, practice ran away with 
theory. The exigencies of electoral and parliamentary 
struggles drew the party more and more into coopera- 
tion with the Liberal Left, and tended more and 
more to transform the revolutionary Socialists, despite 
themselves, into pohtical democrats. Liebknecht, the 
founder, with truly doctrinaire consistency, had held 
that the party existed as a protest against the capitalistic 
organization of society and should therefore take no 
part in parliamentary affairs, except in protest. In the 



THE PROLETARIAN IN POLITICS 187 

days of the anti-socialist laws, the Social Democratic 
members of the Reichstag refused to accept membership 
on committees. The first break in this poHcy of simple 
negation came from South Germany, where as a result 
of more democratic constitutions, the working classes 
had been accustomed to a share in governmental re- 
sponsibihties. A Bavarian deputy, Vollmar, as early as 
1891, came out strongly against the attitude of sulk- 
ing, and demanded that the party, deferring its ultimate 
aim, the socialization of industry, should cooperate with 
the middle- class parties in winning immediate advantages 
for the working class. In spite of the bitter opposition 
of the Prussian irreconcilables, a revision of the party's 
program in this respect actually took place. With the 
growth of Socialist representation in the Reichstag, 
their work on the committees became more and more 
important, and at the beginning of the session of 191 2 
a Socialist presided for a time over the national parlia- 
ment. While the fraction continued to vote steadily 
against all military and naval suppHes and against the 
prosecution of colonial development, signs multiplied 
that the opposition to these national undertakings had 
lost its ferocity, and Socialist votes in committee repeat- 
edly brought about modifications in military and naval 
bills. 

When finally under the shadow of a great national 
danger in May 191 3 the Social Democrats accepted the 
national Defense Bill, which in its system of direct prop- 
erty taxation coincided with their theories, it was 
plain that a considerable breach had at last been made 
in the doctrinarian internationalism of the party and 
that it had at last begun to catch the national spirit. 
That this was true found complete confirmation at the 
outbreak of the war, when disappointment came to 
those who had counted upon socialism as a weakness in 
Germany's hour of trial. The Social Democratic work- 
man threw down his tools and rushed to obey the order 



1 88 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

of mobilization with the same patriotic enthusiasm as 
inspired shopkeeper and reserve officer. The party 
leaders, speaking through their papers, reaffirmed the 
faith of the SociaKsts in the ideals of peace and inter- 
national brotherhood among workers, but put the de- 
fense of German culture from Russian barbarism as a 
first life- consideration ; and the SociaHst members of 
the Reichstag followed the direction of the party councils 
in voting with practical unanimity for the government 
war measures. The same hall which had resounded so 
often with attacks on the spirit of mihtarism, and Prus- 
sian mihtarism in particular, now heard from the Social 
Democratic leaders words of patriotic devotion scarcely 
less ardent than those which came from Conservative 
and Liberal benches. That there were still elements of 
dissent and that the hatred of feudalism and capitahsm 
still burned brightly could not be doubted, but for the 
present these were lost to view in the national enthu- 
siasm which made many Sociahst leaders answer the 
first call for volunteers. 

In South Germany, indeed, even before the "revi- 
sion" crusade the Socialists had become to all intents 
and purposes a national party. In Wiirtemberg, 
Baden and Bavaria they repeatedly voted for the bud- 
get, including the supplies for the royal family, a pro- 
ceeding which stirred the radical SociaUsts to the 
bitterest attacks. In Baden in 1906 the leader of the 
party in the Chamber paid a visit of respect to the Grand 
Duke on the birth of a prince; in the Grand Duchy 
of Hesse in 1907 the fraction voted an address to the 
sovereign. In the diminutive principality of Schwarz- 
burg-Rudolstadt the Sociahsts had in 191 2 a majority 
of the Chamber and elected one of their number presi- 
dent. In the same year in nineteen states of the em- 
pire one hundred and eighty-eight Socialist deputies 
sat in the legislative chambers. The increasing par- 
ticipation in government which such a large number of 



THE PROLETARIAN IN POLITICS 189 

representatives must bring with it on more than one 
occasion excited the Prussian radicals to the boihng 
point and more than one national party convention re- 
sounded with wild scenes of disorder over the struggle 
as to how far a Social Democrat might participate in 
government. Under the sting of the radical lash the 
South German delegates revolted at the Nuremberg 
Convention of 1908 and announced their intention of 
proceeding independently of the party in state affairs, 
submitting themselves to the national convention only 
in matters of national issue. 

That the process of Mauserung of the Social Demo- 
crats, that is, a gradual conversion to the practical 
coworking with other Kberal groups, did not go further 
and faster was chiefly due to conditions in Prussia. It 
is not an accident that most of the radicals among the 
Social Democratic leaders have been Prussians and that 
the worship of an idea among the serried thousands of 
followers has gone further and the collisions between 
the proletarian and propertied classes have been more 
numerous in Prussia than elsewhere in the empire. It 
is true that the Prussian, whether capitalist or proleta- 
rian, has a real gift for discipline, whether it be the 
discipline of the drill sergeant, of the manufacturers' 
association, or the Social Democratic party leader. But 
the existence of a sharp and obdurate class feeling in 
Prussia is to be explained most of all by the constitution 
of the kingdom. Under the provisions of this consti- 
tution, as we have seen, a property qualification for the 
vote exists, and the working classes are almost entirely 
excluded from participation in government, whether it 
be the government of parish, province or kingdom. Of 
the three classes (cf . page 143) which by indirect means 
choose the representatives in local and municipal coun- 
cil, in provincial assembly and national Landtag, the 
first class has included in the elections since 1903 from 
three to five per cent of the total vote, the second class 



190 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

from ten to fourteen per cent, the third class from eighty- 
one to eighty-seven per cent. Since the Socialists from 
the nature of things fall almost entirely in the third class, 
it will be seen what a small chance they have of secur- 
ing adequate representation in any elective body. The 
industrial workers are placed at a further disadvantage 
in elections to the Landtag by a system of electoral dis- 
tricts which has remained, with minor alterations, that 
of sixty years ago. Thus while in the agrarian dis- 
tricts of East Prussia in 1908, 63,000 persons elected a 
deputy, in BerHn the average was one deputy to 170,000. 
It is not surprising that the Conservative agrarians, 
who are most bitterly opposed to the interests of the 
industrial workers, have a far greater number of seats 
than their vote entitles them to. In 1903 the Conserva- 
tives, polling 19.4 per cent of the vote, elected t,^ per 
cent of the deputies in the Landtag. 

It is not to be wondered at that when in 1908 for the 
first time Social Democrats, seven in number, found their 
way into the lower house of the Prussian parliament, 
they were received with scant courtesy. The Con- 
servative Kreuzzeitung protested against their being 
assigned to any committees, and in fact something very 
like a boycott was exercised against them. The elec- 
tion of 1 91 3 brought only a slight increase in numbers; 
but the Socialist deputies made up in noise what they 
lacked in voting strength, and in spite of the iron rod 
of Conservative presiding officers, they made them- 
selves as obnoxious as ever did the Irish Nationalists 
at Westminster in the palmy days of Parnell and Healy. 
Thus in the spring of 191 2 a scandalous scene was 
precipitated on the floor of the Landtag, during which 
the presiding officer was obhged to send for the police. 
The minions of the law forcibly removed a refractory 
Herr Borchardt and played hide-and-seek a while with 
him in the corridors, a comical scene which found its epi- 
logue in the law courts, where the liberties of the house 



THE PROLETARIAN IN POLITICS 191 

were finally vindicated by Herr Borchardt paying a 
small fine. During the same session a Socialist was 
called to order for saying that "war is a mockery against 
God" on the ground that this was "an insult to the 
memory of Emperor WiUiam the Great, who waged 
three wars, and to the chivalrous and patriotic spirit 
of the German people." The Socialist members are 
obliged to hear from the ministerial benches that the 
government regards all SociaHsts as enemies of God and 
Fatherland, and that any official, civil or military, breaks 
his oath to the sovereign when he affiHates himself in 
any way with the anti-monarchical party. 

It was the same bitter impatience against the Prus- 
sian constitution that accounted for many of the violent 
outbreaks of representatives of the fourth estate in the 
Reichstag. Here, backed by crowded benches of applaud- 
ing colleagues, the fiery champions of the proletariat 
have reaped a harvest of calls to order in every session 
for their attacks on the sovereign, the ministry, the 
army, the Prussian constitution and the entire Prussian 
system. Some of the party manifestations have been 
even less excusable, and their childishness can only be 
explained by political immaturity or demagogery run 
mad, as the habit which the Socialist members have 
had of leaving the hall of parliament when the obligato 
Eoch ! is given in honor of the Kaiser at the close of 
the session. When with the Liberal-Radical-Socialist 
victory of 191 2 the Clerical party was obliged to re- 
sign to Radical hands the presidency of the Reichs- 
tag, attacks on the Emperor himself became less re- 
strained than ever. Each public speech of the monarch 
found its echo in some choice epigram from the Socialist 
benches. Thus in the debate on the Kaiser's threat 
against the constitution of Alsace-Lorraine the printer 
Scheidemann, erstwhile president of the assembly, 
aroused an uproar by characterizing the Emperor as a 
"crowned dilettante," and the intellectual free lance 



192 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

Ledebour earned a call to order by declaring that if 
the king of England had spoken as Kaiser Wilhehn did, 
he would be straightway shut up in Balmoral, hke the 
crazy king of Bavaria or Abdul Hamid of Turkey. It 
was not merely by their attacks on the monarch and by 
their unceasing diatribes against army and bureaucracy 
that Social Democratic editors and orators won applause 
in tavern and workshop or wherever their eager constit- 
uents gathered to read the party press. Were a stupid 
recruit in Jiiterbog or Gumbinnen overdrilled by a 
zealous sergeant until he fell from exhaustion, then one 
might be certain that the case would be illuminated 
down to its furthest cranny in the next issue of Vor- 
wdrts or by a vitriol-tongued Liebknecht or Ledebour in 
the Reichstag. Did a Conservative government official 
in some remote Silesian district snort at Social Demo- 
cratic voters at a bye-election, the party press and the 
Reichstag hall would ring with denunciation. Every 
case of judicial error had a merciless searchlight turned 
upon it, every instance of official discrimination against 
those suspected of being Socialists became the theme for 
attacks in which coarseness and brutahty of language 
often crossed the limits prescribed by the German Kbel 
law. Whatever political errors may be charged to the 
Socialists, the weakness of turning the other cheek to 
the smiter is something of which the party's represent- 
atives cannot be accused. While one must credit Social 
Democratic representatives in press and parliament 
with sincerity of motive in the defense of the politi- 
cally and socially weak and defenseless, it cannot be 
overlooked that it is mainly due to them that a spirit 
of undisciplined coarseness and vituperation has found 
its way into German public life. 

There is no denying that they have had provocation 
enough. The government from the sovereign down has 
always made no secret of its determination to fight 
the Socialists as a foreign enemy in the Fatherland. As 



THE PROLETARIAN IN POLITICS 193 

believers in "internationalism" and enemies of the 
existing state, they have been as a matter of course 
ineligible to any office in the government, whether in 
the army, navy or in the civil service, although they 
represent more than one-third of the voting strength of 
the nation. At the elections all government officials 
have been expected to exert every legitimate influence 
against the Social Democratic candidate. Recruits 
who attended Socialist gatherings or frequented taverns 
known to be Socialist rendezvous were Kable to severe 
punishment. Especially in Prussia, although the basic 
ideas of sociahsm had for years been freely taught in the 
universities, any teacher in an elementary school who 
was suspected of SociaHst sympathies exposed himself 
to loss of promotion or might even be removed from the 
service. The same fate awaited any postal or customs 
employee who identified himself in any way with the 
Socialist cause ; and it has often been charged by the 
Socialists and never disproved that the workmen on pub- 
He works have been practically forced to enroll their 
children in clubs where a sort of "hurra-patriotism" 
was taught and where the youngsters were trained to 
regard the Social Democrats as the most dangerous 
enemies of God and native land. Naturally a state of 
affairs Hke this leads to deceit, to cringing, tale-bearing 
and denunciation. Unfortunately also, while the Ger- 
man courts are usually models of fairness and inaccessible 
to poUtical, social or financial influences, the Social 
Democrat has not always had an impartial hearing. 
The Jena students demonstrated against the SodaHst 
convention held in that Httle Athens on the Saale in 
191 1, and the Weimar Volkszeitung was fined for caUing 
one of the student leaders a Mistfink, a somewhat in- 
tensified equivalent of "mucker." A laborer in the 
Kiel district in 191 2 gave his daughter the euphonious 
name of Lassalline. When the registrar refused to 
record a name so full of danger to the Fatherland, the 



194 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

magistrate's court finally ordered hiin to do so, but 
attached to this confirmation of the parent's right to 
denominate his offspring a long oration against so- 
cialism. 

The Socialist workman replied to this boycott by 
exercising in his way a terrorism which the govern- 
ment, aided by all the conservative forces in the state, 
has striven in vain to suppress. He has vented on the 
non-socialist worker his dissatisfaction with the govern- 
ment, and, as might be expected, often with brutality 
and violence. That during a political strike, such as 
the coal strike in the Ruhr district in 191 2 (cf. page 167), 
the Catholic labor unions should suffer bloody attacks 
from the striking miners is not surprising : even the 
non-political Hirsch-Duncker unionists have more than 
one tale to tell of similar mistreatment during labor 
troubles. But it is not merely the strike breakers in 
strike times who have suffered. Every non-Socialist 
brick mason or carpenter must look for a continuous haz- 
ing. If he were so unfortunate as to be obliged to work 
with a Socialist unionist, he might consider himself lucky 
if he got off with the occasional loss of tools or dinner 
bucket or an accidental fall into a horse-pond and did not 
have his hand permanently maimed by the slip of a 
chisel or his head cracked by the premature topple of 
a hod of bricks. Against such petty cases of tyranny 
of course both government and employer have been 
helpless. In past years the government has eagerly 
sought from the Reichstag sharper weapons for the sup- 
pression of strike violence and the protection of strike 
breakers; but in spite of the personal influence of the 
Emperor in their favor, no one of these special measures 
for the protection of the workers has been able to find a 
majority in parhament. The fear that they might be 
used as a weapon for further strengthening the great 
industrialists has always frightened off enough Clericals 
to cause their defeat. 



THE PROLETARIAN IN POLITICS 195 

It must not be supposed that the feeling against the 
Socialists has been confined to feudal squires and factory 
owners. It pervades the entire middle class in Germany, 
for except the extreme Radicals, all Germans, whether 
they thrive by land, trade or manufacture, have been 
taught to regard the Social Democrat as an enemy of 
the Fatherland. The Rhenish shopkeeper, the Black 
Forest clockmaker, the Pomeranian peasant farmer, — 
all have shuddered alike at the growing power and in- 
fluence of the Social Democracy and regarded almost 
any means as holy that would tend to defeat its ultimate 
success. It was only when the excessive demands of 
agrarian and clerical interests aroused the alarm of 
those who live by commerce and industry that these 
classes considered the possibility of a league, and the 
coworking of Radicals and Social Democrats at the 
polls in 191 2 broke ground in that direction. The So- 
cialist leaders, however, have been well aware that 
any modification of their extreme radical attitude tow- 
ard the middle classes would not only endanger their 
hold on the working class, with its sharp class feeling, 
but that a large number of the discontented from all 
classes would fall away from them. For the growth of 
socialism's vote in Germany has been due by no means 
merely to the rising demands of the industrial workers. 
It has been distinctly the party of discontent and pro- 
test. Every discontented and disappointed man is 
liable at any time to express his dissatisfaction with 
society in general by voting the Social Democratic 
ticket. Has the young medical student failed of an 
appointment, has the citizen soldier been given a verbal 
castigation by the officer during his drill with the re- 
serve, has a postal clerk been docked in his pay, has the 
grocer's wife had a snub from the factory owner's, — 
each sufferer can give vent to his private grievance 
against society by voting for the Social Democrat and 
thus making trouble for the powers that be. None of 



196 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

these persons has the slightest sympathy with the 
ultimate socialist program, and none of them would 
think of overthrowing the present state of society, 
except in a moment of ill humor. This habit of "voting 
to the Left" has attacked large classes of democratically 
inclined persons of the lower middle class following such 
a period of reaction as that which ended with the elec- 
tion of the Reichstag of 191 2. 

It is indeed unfortunate that this is so, and the lovers 
of Germany have often asked themselves what the end 
would be, if so strangely constituted a party continued 
to grow in voting strength. Largely through its own 
choice the Social Democracy, although representing one- 
third of the voters in the empire, has been deprived of 
any considerable share in government and remained 
in an attitude of sullen hostility to the state. So well 
have the class organizers of past decades done their 
work that they have developed among the industrial 
workers who make up the Social Democratic party a 
class feeling that is nothing more nor less than an in- 
dependent class culture. It is not merely a political 
gulf which the Socialist leaders have fixed between the 
workman and every other class in Germany. Through 
constant teaching in young men's clubs, trade unions 
and political societies the industrial worker has become 
to a certain extent a different creature from his middle 
class neighbor, a member of a nation within the German 
nation. A striking characteristic of the German the 
world over is the love of Fatherland. The Socialist 
workman has claimed to be an international and to 
feel as one, and in program at least he has professed to 
be more strongly drawn to his fellow proletarian in 
France and England than to the shopkeepers and peas- 
ant proprietors of his native district. The North Ger- 
man is by tradition strongly monarchical; the Social- 
ist frankly detests monarchy and monarch. While 
the German, north and south, may not approve of all 



THE PROLETARIAN IN POLITICS 197 

the methods of the Evangelical and Roman Catholic 
churches, he is held by mighty roots to a deep rehgios- 
ity; the Socialist claims to regard rehgion as a private 
matter, nevertheless he cannot forget that the church 
has been the handmaid of reaction and oppression, and 
the attitude of intellectual leader and proletarian 
follower is frankly and openly anti-religious. Many of 
the most brilliant Social Democratic leaders with tongue 
and pen are Jews, it need hardly be said, unorthodox 
Jews, who have cut loose entirely from the religion of 
Moses and the prophets. Anyone who is at all famihar 
with the anti-Semitic feeling among the upper and 
middle classes in Germany can understand how much 
the prejudice against the Socialists is deepened by this 
Jewish alHance. Furthermore, in spite of the case- 
hardening of the modem struggle for existence, the 
average German has remained a romanticist, full of 
hero-worship and with a deep enthusiasm for the poetry 
of the nation's past; the Social Democrat has been 
taught to view the past under the hard Hght of Marx' 
theory as a battle-ground of economic forces, where 
without mercy the strong has preyed upon the weak. 
When the war came the attitude of the Social 
Democracy toward it showed at once that much of the 
so-called "internationalism" of the German industrial 
worker is purely academic. All the doctrinarianism of 
the tavern benches and the nobler enthusiasm of such 
demonstrations as that of Treptow could not affect 
the age-old roots which bind him to the Fatherland. 
It is improbable that the Socialists, were they to com- 
mand a majority in Germany's parliament and so 
succeed in changing Germany's constitution as to have 
a free hand in legislation, would do anything to weaken 
the nation's defenses, either by a change in the military 
system or a destruction of protective duties. It seemed, 
indeed, as if even old-line leaders, like the late August 
Bebel, had caught something of the enthusiasm for 



198 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

Germany's world-empire. After the so-called ''Hotten- 
tot election" of 1907, when Socialists and Clericals alike 
suffered severely at the hands of the voters for their 
opposition to colonial expansion, there began to show 
itself in the Social Democratic press a tendency toward 
increasing patriotic expression with regard to the national 
honor and defenses. Here again South Germany led 
the way, for here the "revisionists" were stronger. 
Among the first prominent men to fall in the invasion of 
France in August 1914 was Dr. Frank of Mannheim, 
a widely known Social Democratic leader; and indeed 
the blood of Socialist patriots has reddened every battle- 
field where German armies have fought. Under these 
circumstances the attitude of the party towards the 
nation's inner life cannot fail to undergo a change. 

In later years indeed the Social Democrats had already 
accomplished much that was positive. By their con- 
stant and searching criticisms they held a searchlight 
constantly fixed on the weak spots and the sore spots 
in the courts and the army. In the field of social 
legislation, such as the extension of compulsory insur- 
ance, the fixing of a shorter working day, and the pro- 
tection of women and children in the industries, they 
kept high ideals before the country. In their work for 
universal peace, in their opposition to immoderate 
military expenditures and to duels and other manifes- 
tations of the feudal spirit in the army, they offered a 
valuable counterbalance to the militarism-run-mad 
spirit. In their pleas for a judiciary free from influence 
of every kind, schools free from religious bigotry, for a 
system of taxation which should fall directly upon the 
propertied classes, for a strong central control of great 
industries and for woman's suffrage, they accomplished 
much toward the inner upbuilding of the state. These 
affirmative poHcies have been pushed by a class of leaders 
who are very different from those who led the serried 
thousands of the fourth estate in the nineties or even at the 



THE PROLETARIAN IN POLITICS 199 

beginning of the present century. The really advanced 
men in the Social Democratic party are no longer the 
narrow Marxian enthusiasts or class fanatics who grew up 
under the anti-sociaHst laws or when the party was still 
in the fledgling period of political strategy. They are 
often men of the highest university training, occasionally 
with inherited wealth and culture, who know the his- 
tory of the party and are filled with the optimism of 
success. They have shown an increasing power to 
lead the party farther away from a sterile doctrinarianism 
toward a really practical democracy. 



CHAPTER X 

The Church in Politics 

One of the most difficult things for the American to 
understand is the religious hatred which seems inborn in 
many Germans. Other lands have their bigots who are 
only too willing to become persecutors : in southeastern 
Europe religious hatred, complicated with racial antag- 
onism, often breaks out into blood-red conflagration. 
But in Spain church claims were spared the full shock 
of the age of enlightenment, and the confessional fury 
of Russia and the Balkans rests largely on racial hatred. 
In Germany one wonders to find a people, fully en- 
lightened and leading the world in modern culture, 
divided by religious bitterness, centuries old, deep 
seated and ever ready for expression. With all of his 
indififerentism towards personal religion, the cultured 
German of to-day stiU wears the earmarks of the seven- 
teenth century in his attitude toward those who were 
born into another rehgious faith. The confessional 
struggles of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries 
left a bitter heritage to the twentieth. The present 
German empire is nearly two-thirds Protestant and one- 
third Roman Catholic; and since religious prejudice, 
like racial antagonism, rests on mutual ignorance, it is 
very unfortunate that confessional differences follow to 
a certain extent provincial boundaries, and that while 
the northern and eastern provinces of Prussia, the 
kingdom of Saxony and the Thuringian duchies are 
overwhelmingly Lutheran, Bavaria, the Rhine country 
and a part of the Southwest is largely Catholic. Thus 
religious differences have been strengthened by local 



THE CHURCH IN POLITICS 20i 

antagonism and have given rise to problems very difficult 
of solution. 

The fact that the Roman Catholic church is in a 
minority in the German empire explains in the first 
instance its presence as a poHtical force. Ask the 
Roman CathoHc supporter of the Clerical party why the 
church is in politics and he will answer with the oft- 
quoted plank in the Centre platform: "To represent 
the interests of the Catholic Church in national life." 
He realizes that there is in Prussia and in the empire a 
two-thirds majority opposed to claims which the church 
has grown to regard as just, and he believes it his duty 
to stand always on guard in defense of these claims. 
The average voter of the Lutheran or Reformed faith, 
on the other hand, regards the Centre party as an enemy 
of the state, ready at any moment to obey the orders of 
foreign diplomats, who have interfered in the name of 
religion so often and with such disastrous results in 
Germany's interior politics. He feels that the very 
existence of an orderly and well-disciplined phalanx of 
Roman Catholic voters smells of Jesuit intrigue and the 
blood and flames of earlier centuries. And if he is re- 
minded that the German Clerical is as full of patriotism 
and as ready to make sacrifices for the empire as his 
evangelical fellow-patriot, he points to Belgium as a 
modern and enlightened state where all the evils of 
clerical control have been manifest. 

Religious strife and prejudice find their excuse in 
history, and one cannot understand the organization 
and spirit of the Centre party in Germany without at 
least a glance at its origin. This is not the place to do 
more than recall the romantic reaction which followed on 
the dogma-smashing days of the age of enlightenment, 
a reaction out of which the Roman Catholic church in 
Germany gradually arose as a modern and essentially 
democratic institution. The church had felt the throb 
of a vigorous political power even before the revolution 



202 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

of 1848, and the events of that year placed the leaders 
of the Catholic masses in a singularly advantageous 
position. They could appeal to the liberal ideals of 
complete religious freedom, and at the same time they 
were courted by the various governments, who recognized 
in the church a stable and conservative force. Catholic 
societies with hundreds of thousands of members grew 
apace and thrust out their fingers into every parish in 
German lands, knitting anew the old bonds which bound 
parish clergy and laity to Rome. Long before Bismarck 
had ridden victorious Prussia to the head of the new 
empire, the Catholic masses were organized and ready 
for use as a political weapon in the hands of the demo- 
cratic lower clergy under the influence of the wide-eyed 
diplomacy of the Roman curia. 

This solidified spirit of the Catholic masses, ready to 
do and sacrifice in defense of a reinvigorated faith, had 
already drawn first blood in its contests with the govern- 
ments of various Protestant states before it was seized 
and forged into a political weapon by Ludwig Windt- 
horst. This North German aristocrat had been a Han- 
overian minister before 1866 : he resented the incor- 
poration of Hanover into Prussia and hated Bismarck 
with a Guelphic intensity which would have done credit 
to fourteenth century Florence. In 1870 this irreconcil- 
able, whose devious diplomacy and clever opportunism 
set their stamp upon the Centre party for all time, met 
with Bavarian CathoHc leaders and laid plans for the 
representation of Catholic interests in parliament, and 
in the following year their successful candidates made 
their entry into the Prussian Landtag with 48 members 
and into the national Reichstag with 67. 

These deputies chose their seats in the centre of the 
house, hence the designation "Centre" for the Clerical 
or Roman Catholic party in all German parHaments, a 
designation which marks also to a certain extent the 
opportunist poUcy of the fraction wherever found. 



THE CHURCH IN POLITICS 203 

The first hallmark of the party was, as we have seen, 
particularistic and anti-national : one might perhaps say, 
anti-Prussian. The chief opposition in South Germany 
to the solidification and expansion of the North German 
Confederation into an empire came from the Catholic 
leaders of Bavaria, Wiirtemberg and Baden, who saw 
in the hegemony of Prussia a menace to the Catholic 
faith. Undoubtedly they found backing in Roman diplo- 
macy, and their fears were to some extent justifiable. 
Prussia, a predominantly Protestant state, had humbled 
the Austrian house, the faithful patron of the church, 
and had thrust His ApostoHc Majesty out from all 
participation in Germany's affairs. It had leagued 
itself with Victor Emmanuel, the arch-enemy of Pius 
IX, had crushed France, at that time the champion of 
the church in its efforts to maintain its temporal power 
in Italy, and had thus been the indirect cause of the fall 
of the Papal State before the arms of united Italy. 
It had set up in the centre of Europe a powerful empire 
62.3 per cent Protestant. There was also another 
reason why the diplomats of the curia could not but look 
with favor upon the mobilization of German Catholics 
for a specific program. The promulgation of the dogma 
of the immaculate conception in 1854 and that of papal 
infallibility in 1870 had called forth great opposition 
among the faithful in Germany, the classic land of in- 
dividuality of thought, and finally resulted in a seces- 
sion. The seceders, "Old Catholics," never became im- 
portant numerically, but they included among them 
some of the most learned theologians and scientists in 
Roman Catholic universities, and the movement sent a 
shock through the entire church, the results of which 
could not at first be determined. No wonder then that 
the Roman diplomats should have welcomed the panacea 
of war against the heretic as a cure for what seemed to 
be impending rebellion. 

The particularistic and ultramontane element, which 



204 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

saw its interests threatened by the foundation of new 
Germany, was soon solidified by the fire of battle. Bis- 
marck, who regarded the Centre party as a mobilization 
against the state, proceeded at once to make war. There 
is no space here to give in detail the history of the 
struggle between Bismarck and the Catholic party, the 
struggle to which Rudolph Virchow gave the striking 
name of KuUurkampf. It began with the genesis of 
the empire and found the conclusion of its first and 
bitterest period with the death of Pius IX and the rise 
of peremptory economic questions, which called off 
both antagonists. Its field was particularly Prussia, 
although Bavaria and Baden also shared in it, and the 
empire was likewise drawn in. It centred about the 
control of marriage, of the schools and the education 
of the clergy. It is now an idle question as to whether 
Bismarck really carried through his program or whether 
he was obliged to swallow the boast he made at the 
beginning of the struggle and, like Henry IV, another 
proud spirit foiled by the passive violence of the church, 
"go to Canossa." German Catholicism is far too virile, 
Germans, Catholic and Protestant, far too romantically 
attached to tradition, to make it possible to accomplish 
in the Fatherland what Combes and the radical-social- 
ist cabinet did in France thirty years later. The 
KuUurkampf ended in a compromise, because Bismarck 
saw that to prolong the conflict would irretrievably 
weaken the state, not merely in its attitude toward 
foreign foes, but also in its ability to deal with economic 
questions and meet the rising socialist danger. As a 
result of long negotiations with Leo XIII, which found 
their conclusion in 1887, the state retained control over 
marriage and the schools, leaving the church free to 
educate its clergy and govern its priests in its own 
way. 

But the Centre party had been baptized with fire and 
emerged from the conflict flushed with the conscious- 



THE CHURCH IN POLITICS 205 

ness of victory. That Bismarck negotiated a truce and 
peace with the curia and not with the leaders of the 
Catholic party in Germany, these leaders repaid with 
a bitter hostility to his policies which continued long 
after peace with the church had finally been made. They 
fought tooth and nail against the Septennat, a bill pro- 
viding military suppHes for seven years, in 1887, long 
after the Pope had counselled surrender; and they 
consistently presented a solid front against anti- 
Polish and other national policies. With the passing 
of the Bismarck era, however, a change came. Time 
healed the wounds of the Kulturkampf, and WilHam II 
early showed himself desirous of winning the affection 
of his Roman Catholic subjects. Points of irritation 
were carefully removed, and such things as the founding 
of a Catholic theological faculty in the Strasburg 
university and personal gifts of the monarch to the 
church like the celebrated Dormitio MaricB, presented 
to the Catholics of Jerusalem on the occasion of the 
Emperor's visit to the holy city, showed a fair and 
tactful consideration of the rights and feelings of more 
than twenty millions of German Catholics. With the 
passing of Windthorst and the old leaders of the Centre, 
there came also a weakening of the particularism of 
the party. The Centre no less than the Radicals began 
to catch the spirit of a greater Germany. 

With this turning away from narrow aims toward a 
wider nationaHsm came a change in the attitude of the 
Centre toward the government. While Bismarck had 
spoken of the party as "a beleaguering army which 
stands drawn up against the government ever ready for 
attack," the Iron Chancellor's successors, Caprivi and 
Hohenlohe, the latter himself a Catholic of Hberal 
views, made alhances with the Clericals. In 1895 a 
delegate from the Centre was chosen President of the 
Reichstag, and for twelve years representatives of the 
party presided over the national parliament. In place 



2o6 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

of the aristocratic Windthorst, the leadership fell to the 
Kamberg tea merchant Lieber, and a thoroughgoing 
democratization of the party took place. The struggle 
against the Social Democracy in the industrial districts 
of Westphaha and Alsace-Lorraine led to the adoption 
of a social program and to the organization of Catholic 
trade unions. In the main the attitude of the leaders 
remained as before, federative-particularistic, support- 
ing as before the principle of federation as opposed to 
centralization and resisting any attempt to weaken the 
individual states by granting wider powers to the im- 
perial government. The party still clung to the prin- 
ciple of church control of education, but became more 
opportunist, supporting the government so long as 
the government was willing to make small concessions 
to the Catholic constituency, often advocating sound 
Hberal policies when they did not endanger the interests 
of the church. With the colonial crisis of 1906, how- 
ever, the Centre parted company with the government. 
The leaders had become increasingly peremptory in their 
demands on Chancellor Biilow, and finally refused to 
support the government in its colonial policy, which 
failed before the opposition of a Centre and Socialist 
majority. In the elections which followed, the Clericals, 
by their matchless organization, escaped the severe 
losses which the enthusiasm for a greater Germany 
overseas inflicted on the Socialists. The party was 
forced, however, into alliance with the Conservatives, 
whither its opposition to direct taxation and the re- 
organization of the imperial finances had been driving 
it, and with this rise of the so-called "blue-black" 
block came, as has been shown (cf. page 130), a sort of 
reaction in all national affairs, a reaction which lasted 
until the elections of 191 2. The Liberal-Socialist vic- 
tories of that year brought to the Clerical party the first 
considerable loss of candidates which it had suffered 
since its organization. Not merely in the Reichstag, 



THE CHURCH IN POLITICS 207 

but in Bavaria, the citadel of Catholicism, many Centre 
candidates fell before Radical and Socialist opponents. 
One must be familiar with the history of Clericalism 
in Germany to understand the bitterly hostile attitude 
of many enlightened Germans toward anything that 
smacks of the rule of the cassock. The old fear of 
Roman influence, the old cry echoing since the days of 
Walther von der Vogelweide, 

" Das deutsche Silher fahri in einen welschen Schrein, — " * 

resounds still in circles which are by no means bigoted. 
It is not merely the Centre as a political party, sub- 
ordinating all other questions to those of church interest, 
that these patriots fear. It is not the return of the 
Jesuits as teachers or the extension of the influence of 
the Roman Catholic church on schools and bureaucracy. 
What they do fear and resent with a bitterness which 
has grown since national unity and greatness, is the 
control by Roman diplomats of German interior policies 
through German votes. This explains the bitterness in 
cultured circles over the so-called Motu proprio of 19 10, 
by which the curia demanded of every priest an oath 
pledging him to fight to the last against all so-called 
"modem tendencies," which whether under the name 
of higher criticism or scientific discovery were felt to be 
undermining Christian faith. Under the terms of the 
papal decree all university and gymnasial teachers, as 
officers of the state, were expressly excused from the 
anti-modernist oath, which thus became a matter of 
inner church policy, with which non-CathoHcs had of 
course nothing to do. Nevertheless the pubUcation of 
the Motu proprio led to bitter debates in the press and 
the Prussian Landtag, where the matter was brought up 
again and again by Conservative and Radical orators 
and discussed in the tone of violence and unfairness 

^ "Germany's silver falls into a foreign chest, — " 



2o8 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

which marks all debates where religious questions are 
thrown into the political arena. 

The temper shown in the discussions of the "anti- 
modernist" oath, however, was as nothing compared 
with the bitterness which has been engendered by the 
constantly recurring Jesuit question. In 1872 at an 
early stage of the KuUurkampf a rigid law was passed, 
closing all Jesuit institutions, expelling foreign members 
of the Society and laying heavy restrictions upon German 
members. In 1904 the restrictions on German citizens 
were removed, but in spite of constant agitation on the 
part of the Centre, the Society is still forbidden within 
the black-white-red boundary posts. The result was 
the natural one : the Society became truly and widely 
popular in Catholic circles and came practically to 
control the press and church societies in Gerniany. At 
every fresh recurrence of the question as to whether the 
Society shall be readmitted, a debate has broken out 
which would do credit to the seventeenth century. A 
fresh and typical instance occurred in 191 2 when a 
former member of the Centre fraction in the Reichstag, 
Freiherr von Hertling, a professor of philosophy in the 
university of Munich, came to the head of the Bavarian 
ministry. His interpretation of the anti- Jesuit law was 
too liberal to suit non-Catholic Germany and led to 
bitter attacks in the press and the Reichstag, attacks 
which were given back with interest by the powerful 
Berlin Germania, the chief organ of the Centre party 
and by other less brilliant Catholic journals. Finally 
the Hertling interpretation was rejected by the Bundesrat, 
and the interdict rested on Jesuit conferences and assem- 
blies as before. The incident is of importance as illus- 
trating the feeling of the non-Catholic population of 
Germany toward the powerful organizations and far- 
reaching diplomacy of those who hold the threads of 
Roman Catholic church policy. 

Not always indeed has the Centre party taken its 



THE CHURCH IN POLITICS 209 

orders blindly from Rome. In the early days of the 
party it found not a few supporters among those who 
considered Bismarck's policies as too strongly unitary 
and imperial, and Windthorst on more than one occa- 
sion disregarded the advice of the Vatican or kept it 
from the knowledge of his followers in order to carry 
out his own tactics undisturbed. Thus in 1887 the rank 
and file of the party gathered bHndly behind their 
leaders in opposition to the Septennat, completely 
ignorant of the fact that those leaders had been coun- 
selled by Pope Leo to yield to Bismarck, between whom 
and the curia peace had just been concluded. And 
again and again German individuaHsm and independence 
have asserted themselves in the statements of Centrist 
leaders that the infallibility of the Pope does not ex- 
tend to temporal affairs and that the poHtical tactics of 
the Centre party take no orders from Rome. Neverthe- 
less, the fact remains that in recent years scarcely any 
but CathoHcs have supported the Centre party and that 
seven-ninths of all Catholic voters stand behind it. 
Numberless Catholic societies, international, national 
and local, honeycomb Germany, so that in some parishes 
there is hardly a male communicant who is not artic- 
ulated in some way into the half-devotional, half- 
fraternal life of the church. In this mobiUzation of 
Catholic strength the clergy plays a decisive role, and 
the clergy have been the great vote-getters of the 
Centre party. In spite of all restrictive legislation 
against interference with the freedom of the voter, 
every election to the Reichstag or state parliaments has 
brought an appendix of complaints in the Liberal and 
Socialist papers against clerical terrorism. The Centrist 
delegate cannot help a feeling of dependence on this 
powerful organizer of his constituency, although this 
dependence is no longer brought home to him so forcibly 
as in the days of the Kulturkampf, when priests prayed 
publicly in the church for the conversion of a refractory 



2IO THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

Centre delegate who had put the national interests above 
party call. The discipline of the German clergy under 
Rome has become well-nigh perfect in the past two dec- 
ades, and it will readily be seen that the party leaders 
must bring their tactics into Hne with the ideas of the 
hierarchy. They have had need for all of the cleverness 
for which the party is famous in deaHng with questions 
where political expediency runs counter to the demands 
of higher church policy. 

Since the days of the councils of Constance and 
of Basel, however, there has always existed a spirit of 
sturdy independence among German Catholics, and in 
spite of disciplinary measures from Rome, this spirit has 
asserted itself steadily in the Centre party. Gradually 
after the beginning of the twentieth century two ten- 
dencies evolved themselves and took shape, resulting in 
the formation of two groups among the leaders and to 
a certain extent the subordinate officers of the Catholic 
world, the so-called "Cologne group" and the "Berlin 
group." The former, while acknowledging the author- 
ity of the church in religious matters, claimed to be 
politically non-confessional, supporting the Centre as 
a Christian rather than a church body. The latter 
emphasized the Catholic view of life in all questions, 
remaining in close touch with the church even in matters 
not concerning religion. The former believes in non- 
confessional trade-unions, and would treat the evangeli- 
cal church as a sister church ; the latter follows closely 
the direction of the bishops and the clergy. While 
professedly regarding church and state as coordinate, 
each sovereign in its own field, it conserves first of all 
the interests of the church, and is ever ready to beheve 
the holy faith in danger and to sound the long roll of 
alarm even on questions of party expediency. 

It cannot be for a moment doubtful with which of 
these wings the diplomats of Rome and the greater 
part of the influential clergy are to be found. The late 



THE CHURCH IN POLITICS 211 

Cardinal Kopp, archbishop of Breslau, was long regarded 
as the head of this confessional direction; and the 
action of the curia in 191 2 in selecting a man of similar 
views as successor to the late Dr. Fischer, the liberal- 
minded archbishop of Cologne, was an instance of the 
steady pressure from Rome to which the German epis- 
copate has been obhged to yield. Most clearly has this 
pressure been made manifest in the matter of the Cathohc 
labor unions, the most delicate question with which the 
Centrist leaders have had to deal since the days of the 
Septennat. To no chapter in its history does the party 
look back with more justifiable pride than to the mobili- 
zation of labor in the cause of the church through the 
so-called "Christian" unions. This movement, which 
was a part of the drift of the party toward democracy, 
was directed especially against the Socialists, who had 
begun to organize CathoHc workmen in the industrial 
Rhine-Westphahan district into unions affiliated with 
the Social Democratic party. While not approaching 
the SociaHst unions in number, the Christian unions 
soon attained a very large membership in the West and 
in Silesia. Professedly non-confessional, they did not 
publish any statistics of the faith of their members, 
and they fought in more than one labor battle, like the 
coal strike of 1907, shoulder to shoulder with the 
Socialist workingmen. Throughout their history they 
have remained more or less under the control of the 
leaders of the Centre. The church hierarchy has, how- 
ever, never entirely trusted the Christian unions, and 
the followers of the more radical wing of the CathoHc 
party organized later the Catholic Workingmen's Union, 
a strictly confessional organization. This organization 
at its session in Berlin at Whitsuntide 191 2 received the 
especial papal blessing, the curia censuring at the same 
time the Christian unions "because they separated 
labor from rehgion." This came Uke a bolt from the 
blue, and the Centrist leaders sought and obtained a 



212 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

respite until the Vatican could hear the other side of 
the matter, at the same time calling in the resources 
of Prussian diplomacy. It can readily be seen what 
tremendous difficulties have lain in the road of those 
Catholic leaders who would unite a national policy with 
the unbending universal ideas of the church. 

It belongs to the history of the Centre party that it 
has upheld the federative principle in the national con- 
stitution and opposed anything which would increase 
the powers of the empire at the expense of the individual 
states. It was called into being largely in opposition 
to Prussia, and it has steadily opposed anything that 
would augment Prussia's power. Thus in 191 1 it 
supported vigorously the proposition finally incorpo- 
rated in the constitution of Alsace-Lorraine, which as- 
signed to this state three votes in the Bundesrat only 
in case these votes were cast against Prussia's vote. 
The Poles being almost to a man CathoHc, the Centre 
has consistently opposed Prussia's attempts at the for- 
cible nationaHzation of this Slavic people. It has like- 
wise steadily opposed anything which would strengthen 
the imperial finances and make the nation less depen- 
dent on the proportional contributions from the in- 
dividual states which are necessary to wipe out the 
deficit in the empire's annual budget, and has extended 
this opposition to every federal income and inheritance 
tax. With respect to the national defenses, the party 
did, as we have seen, undergo something Kke a conver- 
sion to the idea of a greater Germany, and became 
almost as wilHng to vote supplies as the National Liberals 
themselves. 

In social matters the Centre has outstripped all other 
parties, with the exception of the SociaHsts, in its de- 
mands for the protection of labor. Ever since the in- 
crease of the industrially employed millions forced all 
parties in Germany to go forward with labor legislation 
the Centre has made the workingmen the especial 



THE CHURCH IN POLITICS 213 

object of its care. The hundreds of thousands of 
Catholic workers in the industrial districts of the West 
and of Silesia have had their claims adroitly, if not al- 
ways consistently, presented by the Catholic press. Here 
•their leaders have been engaged in a bitter struggle with 
the Social Democrats, who have sought by means which 
varied from the most insidious argument to open vio- 
lence to break the solidarity of the CathoKc workers. 
In its able and powerful press, and in the halls of the 
national and provincial legislatures, the Centrist leaders 
are not far behind the Socialists in their demands for 
shorter hours for labor and for better wages and better 
working conditions, particularly in the mining districts 
of Westphalia, where a large percentage of the labor is 
Catholic. These leaders have been occasionally forced 
into a difficult position, as in the case of the coal strike 
of 191 2, when political expediency ran counter to the 
interests of labor; but their discipline has held firm, 
and the Christian unions followed the lead of the party 
generals even when interest would have led them to 
make common cause with the Socialists. While, with 
true trimmer poHcy, the party has occasionally worked 
together with the Socialists both in the empire and in 
Bavaria, it has in the main been driven into a reactionary 
position in its effort to hinder the advance of socialism. 
Thus, although in the Centre platform, which is the 
shortest of German political platforms, the party favors 
universal suffrage, it did everything possible to defeat 
this in the attempted revision of the Prussian constitution 
in 1910, because universal suffrage would mean the loss 
of seats in favor of the Social Democrats. 

The Social Democrats claim to represent the awakened 
class consciousness of the worker : the Clerical party 
writes the spirit of Christian humanity on its banners. 
This spirit of humanity has found expression in many 
efforts and accomplishments of the Centre. It regularly 
fought for a humane administration of the colonies, 



214 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

regarding these vast stretches of Africa, peopled by un- 
taught savages, less as sources of material wealth than 
as opportunities for the spread of Christian civilization. 
Amid the many sordid demands of business interests for 
gain at any cost, the CathoHc leaders in press and 
parliament consistently advocated humane standards in 
the treatment of the natives, and they no less than the 
Socialists laid bare colonial scandals and faced un- 
popularity and defeat rather than sacrifice their ideals. 

The energy of Catholic societies on the Continent in 
combating the white slave traflic and in the protection 
of women and girls has been reflected in the poHcy of 
the Centre party. It has been always the sturdy 
opponent of vicious Hterature and the scandalous pro- 
ductions with which greedy publishers have in recent 
years flooded Germany under the cloak of art and 
science. The floods of suggestive books and pictures 
and the general lowering of the moral tone in the social 
life of the rapidly growing cities has excited the alarm of 
many public-spirited men and women in Germany, and 
much has been done on the part of church societies and 
other organizations to fight these tendencies. The 
Centre is the only political party which has made this 
fight a consistent part of its practice. Occasionally 
it has gone too far, and its opponents claim that it 
would put German Hterature and art in leading strings. 
Nevertheless, the wholesome tone which rings in the 
Catholic press and from CathoHc speakers on these 
subjects has had a markedly tonic effect. 

It is plain then that the nation reaps advantages 
as well as disadvantages from a poHtical organization 
which is so closely alHed with the church. In another 
direction the political influence of the church makes 
itself felt as a strong conservative force, in the attitude 
of the Clerical party towards the schools. Regarding 
no subject does the American student of European 
poHtics need to divest himself more completely of 



THE CHURCH IN POLITICS 215 

occidental prejudices than the subject of confessional 
education in public schools. Whatever may be said of 
the necessity of divorcing church and state in matters 
of education, it must be admitted that the Germans, 
with their history and organization of society, have a 
very different problem from our own, and that such a 
clean sweep as the Combes ministry made of public 
rehgious instruction in France would not be possible 
in a land where unbroken traditions of rehgious teaching 
in the pubHc schools have come down from the time of 
Charlemagne. Except in a very few instances, rehgious 
instruction is obhgatory in all German schools, with due 
regard to confessional differences (cf. Chap. XVI). This 
practice is one which the Centre party as the mouth- 
piece of the CathoHc Church defends as vigorously and 
guards as jealously as any article of its faith. "We 
still hve in a Christian state," said one of the Clerical 
leaders, Dr. Dittrich, in the Prussian Landtag in 191 2. 
"If it is therefore one of the duties of the church to 
care for the rehgious foundation of national hfe, it is 
also a duty of the state. Education must above all 
proceed along the old approved hnes of Christian doc- 
trine. We wish the preservation of the elementary 
schools on the old basis of Christianity." 

Piety without bigotry, morahty without intolerance, 
Christian love and humanity wide enough to include 
all men, — how often this ideal appears as the founda- 
tion stone of the church and how soon it disappears in 
contact with the struggle for place and power. When 
the church enters poHtics, it exposes its sublime principles 
to degradation by the constant association with ex- 
pediency, and intolerance and selfishness soon rule in the 
place of the Christian virtues. There has been much in 
the trimming and deviousness of Clerical politics in 
Germany to make one wish that Catholic rights in the 
Fatherland might have been defended without the crys- 
tallization of confessional interests into party form, 



2i6 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

with the constant fanning into flame of the smouldering 
embers of religious hatred. Under the plea that the 
church is threatened it is all too easy to bring the voter 
into Hne against his interest and judgment, and despite 
the denial of enhghtened German Catholics, it is true 
that many thousand voters still go to the polls with the 
conviction that to refuse to support the Centre candi- 
date is denying obedience to the Holy Father in Rome. 
On the other hand the Centre party has made enormous 
progress in the idea of nationality. It has sturdily 
maintained its opposition to the unitary principle and 
has ever been the defender of the rights and privileges 
of the individual states, but with the passing of the old 
bitterness engendered by the Kulturkampf, it became 
essentially a national party, not less concerned with 
the defense of the new Fatherland and the growth of 
Germany both at home and overseas than the National 
Liberals themselves. For reasons which have been 
sufficiently indicated the German Catholic was much 
slower than his evangelical brother to accept the idea 
of the new empire, but his patriotism and readiness 
for sacrifice are no less. 



CHAPTER XI 

The Conquered Provinces 

"Handed over, in contempt of all justice and by an 
execrable abuse of power, to the domination of a foreign 
sovereign, we declare once more null and void the agree- 
ment which disposes of us without our consent. Your 
brothers of Alsace-Lorraine, separated in this manner 
from the common family, will preserve, though absent 
from the fireside, a faithful affection for France until 
the day comes when we shaU return once more to our 
places in. our home!" These pathetic words were the 
farewell address of the delegates from Alsace-Lorraine 
to the French national assembly at Bordeaux. On 
that day, March 4, 187 1, the peace negotiated by Thiers 
and Bismarck had already been approved by the earnest- 
faced men who had gathered to save France. The 
two provinces which had echoed for months under the 
tread of German soldiers had passed finally from Gallic 
to Germanic sovereignty. Nothing in the bitter cup 
of humiliation which France drained in the "terrible 
year" was equal to this, and French orators and poets 
bade many a sad farewell to the departing sister prov- 
inces. Their sympathy was aroused again when some- 
thing over a year after the conclusion of the peace 
of Frankfort the citizens of the conquered land were 
forced to make a bitter choice between the acceptance 
of their lot as subjects of the German empire and the 
abandonment of their homes. After October i, 1872, 
all persons remaining in the provinces were to be de- 
prived of any choice and henceforth regarded as German 

217 



2i8 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

subjects. French historians aver that two hundred 
thousand sons and daughters of the provinces deserted 
the smiling Alsatian fields and the valley of the Moselle 
in the last days of September of that year. Of two 
hundred magistrates only five are said to have remained. 
While one cannot share the perfervid enthusiasm of the 
French writers of the time for those who preferred the 
name of Frenchmen to sharing the trials of their own 
narrower homeland, one must credit them with sincere 
devotion to an ideal. They were for the most part 
people of wealth and refinement, and many of them as 
residents in Paris have since that day formed the most 
irreconcilable group of Germany's foes. 

The recovery of Alsace was the popular rallying cry 
with the Germans who wore the helmets and carried 
the rifles in 1 8 70. Far more than revenge for the humilia- 
tions imposed by Napoleon I, the rewinning of German 
territory west of the Rhine was and is the popular slogan 
for German historian and story-teller in discussing the 
war with France, which was, as a matter of fact, less a 
war of aggression than an insurance for German unity. 
Alsace and Strasburg ! What memories these conjured 
up in the soul of the whole romance-loving nation east 
of the Rhine ! Memories of Erwin von Steinbach and 
the famous Gothic minster at Strasburg with its 
truncated tower; of Sebastian Brant and Fischart and 
the Meistersingers and all the rugged but sturdy and 
honest-hearted culture of the most German of all cen- 
turies, the sixteenth; most romantic of all, memories 
of the young student Goethe wooing the daughter of the 
village pastor in the grape arbor at Sesenheim, — all 
proofs sufficient that the strong German heart beat in 
Alsace, concealing itself but poorly under the shining 
gloss of French language and manners. No wonder that 
the Wacht am Rhein, written in 1841 as an early expres- 
sion of the German impulse towards the West that had 
been manifest ever since the fall of Napoleon, became 



THE CONQUERED PROVINCES 219 

the popular song of the advancing armies in 1870. The 
veriest beginner in German history in the nineteenth 
century learns to reckon with the romantic impulses of 
the nation as a very real factor in shaping events : to 
the Rhine romanticism which the Wars of Liberation 
called into being, the war of 1870 added an Alsatian 
romanticism, which fired German hearts and helped to 
win German victories at Worth and Metz. 

>One needs indeed a considerable share of German 
romance if one is to indorse the theory of German 
historians that Germany was justified in annexing 
Alsace-Lorraine for historical reasons. Alsace has, it 
is true, a preponderatingly German population, which 
spoke in 1871 a German dialect. The same is, however, 
true of the German cantons of Switzerland. In its 
early history Alsace formed a part of the Roman and 
Frankish empires and of the West Frankish kingdom, 
and in the tenth century was incorporated into the Ger- 
manic empire. To the empire it then belonged for seven 
hundred years, until the Thirty Years' War brought the 
French invader. The major part of the provinces was 
conquered at that time and fell to France in the treaties 
of Westphalia in 1648. Other parts, with Strasburg, 
were stolen thirty years later by Louis XIV, on various 
pretexts and confirmed in French possession at the 
peace of Ryswick in 1697, and the remaining small dis- 
tricts were absorbed during the wars of the Revolution 
and by the treaties of 1814 became ofiicially French. 
If, however, reparation for these repeated acts of ag- 
gression was due, it was due to Austria, which was 
at that time the head of the crumbling Holy Roman 
Empire and to the several dynasties whose princes 
had lost their petty states. By the end of the seven- 
teenth century French manners and customs had 
taken possession of the intellectual classes, and the 
dialect-free French had supplanted the Alsatian 
patois as the language of culture; in fact, after the 



/ 



/: 



220 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

revolutionary and Napoleonic wars had brought French 
political life into such close touch with the west bank of 
the Rhine, French culture had thoroughly won over the 
upper landed gentry and the upper and middle classes 
of the Alsatian towns. The French claim to Alsace 
was as strong as is Prussia's claim to Posen, with its 62 
per cent of Poles or to northern Schleswig, with its pre- 
dominantly Danish population. 

If this be true of Alsace, German historians can find 
still less historical justification for the annexation of 
Lorraine, where, as we have seen (cf. page 4), the 
German line was made to dip to the west to include 
Metz. The capital of the upper Moselle, like the part 
of Lorraine lying farther west and remaining in French 
possession and like the French provinces Picardy, 
Champagne and Bourgogne, originally had a Germanic 
population and language, and it is possible that the 
dialect of the early Prankish conquerors may have main- 
tained itself in and around Metz until the twelfth century. 
The city and neighboring districts, which, like Alsace, had 
since the tenth century belonged to the Germanic em- 
pire, were seized by France in 1552, and, like the major 
part of Alsace, definitely ceased to be a part of the em- 
pire at the peace of Westphalia in 1648. Other small 
sections to the east and southeast were conquered by 
the arms of Louis XIV in 1659, 1661 and 1680; but 
the greater part of Lorraine was not attached to the 
French monarchy until 1766. It is, however, certain that 
for many hundred years the upper Moselle had been 
French in language and culture. The German census 
of 1880 showed that out of 855 communes in Alsace 
only 44 spoke French, while out of 752 in Lorraine, 
in 341 French was the language of the peasantry. 
^W^ / It is evident that the student of history would find it 
hard to justify the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine on any 
theory of romantic justice or racial or cultural attach- 
'I ment. Their annexation was, however, justifiable in a 



/ 



THE CONQUERED PROVINCES 221 

very real way by the strategic requirements of Germany 
in 187 1 and after. The Vosges range which divides 
Alsace from France is as much a wall and defense against 
every aggressor in this age of twentieth century technique 
as when its steep sides turned back the Allemanian in- 
vader fourteen centuries ago. With Alsace in German 
possession and Strasburg and Colmar fortified, Metz 
became as never before the key to western Germany. 
Metz in German hands was a guarantee that the neu- 
trality of Luxemburg could be violated only from the 
German side and that no surprise attack could be 
launched into the vitals of the empire down the valley of 
the Moselle. Indeed, the mountain chains of the Vosges, 
far more than the Rhine is the strategic mihtary frontier 
between France and Germany, while farther north Metz 
and Diedenhofen are the keys to the Moselle valley, and 
their possession by Germany is a strategic necessity for 
defense — against possible French attack — of the age- 
old German district which contains Worms and Mayence, 
Treves and Coblenz, and even Cologne and Aix-la- 
Chapelle. If the instinct for self-preservation suspends 
less urgent laws for nations as well as individuals, 
Germany was certainly justified in retaining Alsace- 
Lorraine, and thus securing natural defenses, the lack 
of which had made the Fatherland for centuries a play- 
ground for foreign greed and ambition. 

With the annexation of the provinces, the necessity 
arose immediately for their articulation into the empire 
and their government. Not a few voices called urgently 
for the incorporation of Alsace-Lorraine into Prussia, 
as had been done with Schleswig-Holstein, and there is 
httle doubt that the empire would have saved itself 
much irritation if this had been done. However, the 
collision of the Prussian military and ofi&cial system, 
with its rigid discipline and many Verbotens, and the 
easy-going customs and traditions of the Southwest 
would have been terrific. The provinces had been won, 



222 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

not by Prussia alone, but by the entire nation in arms ; 
and a consideration of South German feelings led Bis- 
marck to incorporate them into the empire as "imperial 
land," held and administered by the empire as a whole. 
The government of this "Imperial Land" began with 
a military dictatorship, and reached a final stage of 
development with the granting of a constitution forty 
years later, this gradual process in self-government being 
accompanied by the steady progress of even the peasantry 
of western Lorraine in Germanization. After two years 
of miHtary dictatorship, Alsace-Lorraine was admitted 
to the privileges granted by the imperial constitution, 
although the governor was still empowered to declare 
martial law and the troops were under his direct com- 
mand. The " Imperial Land " was represented by fifteen 
delegates in the Reichstag; and gradually as the dis- 
turbed condition of the country abated, the citizens 
were intrusted with some control of local affairs through 
a representative committee, which developed by degrees 
from a purely advisory body into one with the power of 
accepting or rejecting laws passed by the imperial parlia- 
ment for the government of the territory. In 1879 the 
governor or Statthalter was duly invested with all the attri- 
butes of a representative of the imperial power in the prov- 
ince and was surrounded by a ministry. Unfortunately 
the governors seem to have been chosen for the most part 
for no other reason than because they enjoyed the favor 
of the Emperor, and they filled the difficult office with 
only indifferent success. Chafing under the so-called 
"dictatorship paragraph," which permitted the governor 
to suspend constitutional rights in case of emergency, 
the people of Alsace-Lorraine manifested their resent- 
ment at German rule in many ways; and periods of 
repression, when French newspapers were confiscated, 
French clubs suppressed and students and others sus- 
pected of French sympathy given severe prison sentences 
or exiled, varied with periods when the governor and 



THE CONQUERED PROVINCES 223 

ministers did everything they could to promote good 
feehng with the children of the land and to entice them 
into the service of the government. Finally in 1902 the 
Reichstag felt it safe to withdraw the dictatorial powers 
of the governor, thereby elevating the people of Alsace- 
Lorraine, according to their own picturesque statement, 
from "second-class Germans" to "first-class Germans"; 
and at last in 191 1, after long discussion and despite 
much opposition, a constitution was finally granted the 
"Imperial Land," by which it was given full self-govern- 
ment and representation in the Bundesrat along with its 
sister states. Under this constitution large powers are 
still guaranteed to the Emperor, who names the governor 
and one-half of the upper chamber of the Diet and retains 
a veto power on the laws. The other half of the upper 
chamber represents the church and learned institutions 
and the cities. The lower house of the Diet is elected by 
unrestricted suffrage, thereby giving the constitution the 
democratic stamp demanded by the French traditions of 
the country. 

The attitude of the population of Alsace-Lorraine tow- 
ard the empire has been aheady indicated. With the 
exception of Protestant circles (Alsace-Lorraine was in 
187 1 four-fifths Roman CathoHc), the intelligent and 
representative part of the people accepted allegiance to 
Germany as a bitter necessity and bore it for many 
years as a grievous burden. Especially the wealthy 
classes, bound by so many ties to France and French 
culture, resented the change of Fatherland and struggled 
as best they could against the hard hand of Bismarck. 
And his hand was hard. Men who were justly proud of 
the part which their land had played in the revolutionary 
and Napoleonic wars were obHged to send their sons to 
serve their mihtary years under Prussian drill sergeants 
in Silesia or the more distant East, for the mihtary 
authorities during the first thirty years regarded a 
separation from the native soil as the best system for 



L 



224 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

germanizing and nationalizing the young Alsatian and 
Lorrainer. Men who had prided themselves on the 
purity of their French were forced to see French dropped 
as a subject of instruction in the schools and a guerilla 
war waged on French newspapers and French-speak- 
ing clubs. Worse than all, the people of the "Imperial 
Land," who had been accustomed to the easy-going, 
indulgent methods of French administration, had to 
submit to be aggressively and energetically governed 
by a bureaucracy which took Prussian methods as its 
ideal. The bitter feeling which all of this engendered 
found expression in continuous protests on the part of 
the fifteen delegates in the Reichstag, who made common 
cause with Poles, Danes, Guelphs and Socialists in op- 
posing increases in the army and every other national 
measure. 

i But time heals all wounds, and even before the acces- 
''sionT of William II, the population of Alsace-Lorraine 
had begun to show some appreciation of the vast material 
benefits which union with the other German states had 
brought them. The young Emperor attempted here as 
elsewhere to soften the hard contrasts which the founda- 
tion of the empire had left. The university of Stras- 
burg, which since its reopening in 1871 had enjoyed the 
especial favor of the imperial government as a centre for 
the re-germanization of Alsace, received new marks of 
imperial favor. Especial concessions were made to the 
Catholics of the "Imperial Land." The Emperor pur- 
chased for himself the beautiful estate Urville in Lor- 
raine, and made repeated visits to Strasburg, where in 
the imperial palace he sought to come into personal 
touch with the notables of the region. In short, nothing 
was left undone to win the affections of the conquered 
provinces without sacrifice of the national program of re- 
germanization. The chivalrous people of the provinces 
took pride in making presents to the Emperor and 
Empress, and seemed to have made such progress in 



THE CONQUERED PROVINCES 225 

nationalism that in 1902 all dictatorial powers were 
taken away from the governor, and in the following 
year the recruits of Alsace-Lorraine received the long- 
desired permission to serve out their active military 
years within sight of their native mountains. When, 
however, in 191 1 the land seemed ripe for complete 
self-government under a constitution, the majority of 
the Alsace-Lorraine delegates in the Reichstag voted 
against this instrument on the ground that it gave too 
much power to the Emperor and did not accord to the 
citizens of the new state the full measure of independence 
for which they had longed. 

The constitution of Alsace-Lorraine was a compromise. 
The best testimony to its fairness is to be found in the 
dissatisfaction with which it was greeted both by the 
rabid Prussophiles, who would gladly have annexed 
the "Imperial Land" to the major monarchy of the 
empire, to be painfully but thoroughly digested, as 
were Schleswig-Holstein, Hanover and Hesse-Cassel, 
and by the rabid Alsatian patriots who had fixed their 
eyes on nothing less than practical independence of 
the empire. The results of its adoption at once showed 
that the nationalization of the conquered lands was 
far from complete. In place of the old protest, there 
showed itself at once a spirit of "Alsace-Lorraine for 
the Alsace-Lorrainers." A national party was formed, 
which was defeated at the polls by the ultramontane 
Centre, it is true ; but the latter, and indeed all other 
parties, showed as sooin as the first Diet convened at 
Strasburg that nothing was further from their minds 
than a docile obedience to the demands of the Emperor's 
ministry. Men like the priest Emil Wetterle, almost 
as well known in France as in his native Alsace, soon 
found numerous points for rebellion. The supplies for 
certain government perquisites, such as the "imperial 
hunt," in which the Emperor had taken no part since 
1896, were stricken from the budget. The household 

Q 



226 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

expense account of the governor was reduced, and 
twenty-five thousand dollars which had been laid aside 
each year for private expenses of government was held 
up until the Diet should be guaranteed control over 
the items of its expenditure. Sympathy with France 
and hostility to the empire began to show themselves 
more boldly both in the press of the new state and in 
the speeches of various representative Alsatians. 

The imperial ministry did not hesitate to make re- 
prisals. The Grafenstaden locomotive works, which 
had for years furnished engines for the railways of Al- 
sace-Lorraine and neighboring provinces, suddenly had 
all of their orders cancelled and were told to look for no 
more until the director, a well-known pro-French en- 
thusiast, should have been dismissed. He finally had 
to go, in spite of frantic protests in the Diet and the 
press. The unpopular Minister of the Interior, Mandel, 
was decorated for his zeal by the Emperor; and the 
monarch himself on a visit to Strasburg in May 191 2 
gave expression to impulsive threats against the con- 
stitution which aroused bitter resentment both within 
and without Alsace-Lorraine (cf. page no). In short, 
the introduction of self-government, safeguarded even 
as it was, showed plainly that the people of the con- 
quered provinces did not yet feel themselves a part of 
the German empire. 

The sober thought of Germany was puzzled and 
humiliated by the continual recurrence of the Alsace- 
Lorraine problem. The old difficulty which the Prus- 
sian-German administration has always had to face in 
its contact with subject peoples showed itself in renewed 
force after the granting of the constitution, the difficulty 
of making concessions to the spirit of local self-govern- 
ment and local traditions, generally. It may be ad- 
mitted that there is no system of administration so 
effective as the Prusso-German bureaucracy when deal- 
ing with Germans who have been trained in the schools 



THE CONQUERED PROVINCES 227 

and discipline of the Fatherland. It is equally certain 
that when it comes into contact with other races and 
conditions it adapts itself to the new surroundings only 
with great dif&culty and produces a maximum of friction. 
Begotten as the Prussian system was under conditions 
where iron discipline was a requisite for success, thor- 
oughly convinced of its own efficiency, it knows no law 
but that of force and fails in those peaceful contests 
where victory must be won by conciliation. If the 
people of the conquered provinces are to be won over 
for the empire at all, it must be by granting them a full 
measure of self-government and wide play for the de- 
velopment of their own culture, and if need be, freedom 
to use the language which had been associated with that 
culture for two hundred years. History shows many 
instances where a conquered people, hke the Southern 
States after the American civil war or the Boers of South 
Africa, has been won over to hearty loyalty when ac- 
corded the right to govern itself after its own traditions. 
That this was denied to the people of Alsace-Lorraine 
in the early years after the annexation, was excusable 
through fear of France, although it is doubtful if the 
thoroughgoing German bureaucracy with its determina- 
tion to regermanize the provinces would have granted 
them self-government, even if the danger of French 
revenge had been farther away. With the adoption of 
the constitution in 191 1, however, an opportunity was 
offered the government to show the "Imperial Land" 
a really magnanimous spirit and to promote the working 
out of the problems of the new state with a minimum of 
administrative interference, even at the cost of con- 
siderable noisy fermentation on the part of uneasy 
spirits. 

That this was not to be done was apparent from the 
first. Not only the reprisals mentioned in connection 
with the strife with the Diet showed that, but the 
constantly growing irritation which followed. French 



/ 



/ 



228 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

newspapers and French-speaking clubs were harassed, 
as in the days of Bismarck, and the army administration, 
doubtless alarmed by the international situation, which 
seemed in 1913 so full of danger, once more decreed 
that conscripts from Alsace-Lorraine should serve their 
terms of military service outside of their native state. 

In some of its acts the imperial government came very 
near making itself ridiculous, as in the prosecution for 
treason of the Alsatian poet-artist, Jacob Waltz, who 
under the name of "OncleHansi" had pubHshed satires 
against the German administration in the form of chil- 
dren's books. For the latest of these, Mon Village, 
he was tried in June 1914, by the Imperial Court at 
Leipsic on the charge of high treason and after a hearing 
which gave the French and British papers abundant 
opportunity for satirical comments, he was acquitted 
of this charge but was sentenced to a year's imprison- 
ment for insulting the gendarmes and inciting to dis- 
order, a sentence which he escaped by flight to France. 
The Berlin government was harassed by the fear of 
treasonable arrangements between Alsace-Lorraine and 
Paris. That this fear was well grounded was made 
more than probable by the fact that with the declaration 
of martial law in the "Imperial Land" after the war 
tocsin sounded at the beginning of August 1914, several 
prominent Alsatians, including Wetterle, fled across the 
border into France, and that others who were not so 
fortunate as to make their escape were arrested and found 
guilty of treasonable acts. 

That these doings could have caused any serious harm 
to Germany's relations to France seems, however, un- 
thinkable. Certainly any irritation of this kind would 
have been more than offset by the gain in confidence on 
the part of the people of the provinces toward the em- 
pire. As it was, however, the threats against the con- 
stitution and the various pin pricks which the government 
was able to inflict effectively destroyed any national 



/ 



THE CONQUERED PROVINCES 229 

patriotism which the granting of the constitution might 
have inspired. Popular irritation grew and showed it- 
self in many ways, culminating in the incidents at Za- 
bern in December 1913. In this busy Alsatian town 
of some ten thousand inhabitants a Prussian regiment 
of infantry was quartered. Soldiers on duty at the 
barracks and at Hberty in the town had been subjected 
to insults, and in several cases rough treatment on the 
part of rude fellows of the baser sort among the populace. 
Their officers, filled with the Prussian tradition of mili- 
tary supremacy, ordered the privates to make forcible 
resistance, employing at the same time the rugged 
language of the barracks, which being faithfully re- 
ported in the town, added still further to the excitement. 
A crisis was reached in an encounter between civilians 
and a squad of soldiers led by a young lieutenant, in 
which the latter fearing, as he claimed, that he would be 
assaulted by a civilian of the lower class, with the conse- 
quent irreparable loss of honor according to the peculiar 
Prussian military tradition, sabred a lame shoemaker. 
In the riot which resulted Colonel Reutter, in command 
at the barracks, took over the administration of public 
order, brusquely thrusting aside the civil officials and 
pacif3dng the city by the abrupt methods of the military. 
Instantly a shout of protest arose, not only from Alsace- 
Lorraine, but from all non-feudal circles in Germany 
as well. The rude supplanting of the civil power by the 
military was regarded as a recession to the most auto- 
cratic days of Prussian history, and in the Reichstag 
loud calls went up for an authoritative statement from 
the Kaiser. As we have seen (cf. page 137), the Im- 
perial Diet recorded a vote of censure upon the Chan- 
cellor for a speech in which the majesty of the law was 
not vindicated. The whole matter went to the Emperor 
as supreme military authority and the net result was the 
transferring of the regiment and the court-martialing of 
its officers. The latter were finally acquitted, and Colonel 



230 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

Reutter soon after was promoted by the Emperor. The 
feeling of the feudal classes was summed up in the words 
of the reactionary Police President of Berlin, Von Jagow : 
"Alsace-Lorraine is the enemy's country !" Non-feudal 
Germany accepted a technical statement from the 
ministry confirming the supremacy of the constitution 
over the military power, with a further promise from 
the government that a certain old Prussian cabinet 
order of 1820 which might be interpreted to the contrary 
would be amended. Radical and Socialist were the 
more ready to still their attacks and hush the matter 
up, because the French journals, always ready to foment 
discord in the lost provinces, had seized upon the situa- 
tion. 

Is it then a reunion with France that the people of 
Alsace-Lorraine desire? Such at least has always been 
the view of the French press. Many of the Paris journals 
maintained correspondents at Metz and Strasburg and 
elsewhere in Alsace-Lorraine; and if one could beheve 
the highly tinted reports which came from these sources, 
the people of the lost provinces were languishing in 
chains and awaiting with eagerness the moment of a 
return into the arms of Mother France. The annual 
demonstrations in Paris, with the depositing of wreaths 
before the Strasburg monument on the Place de la 
Concorde, grew with the reawakening of French patriot- 
ism after the Morocco affair. The writer, however, who 
had good opportunities of getting acquainted with the 
"Imperial Land" and its people in the decade preceding 
the European war, must share the opinion of those ob- 
servers who were not able to find much real enthusiasm 
for France there. That there was much sentimental 
sympathy for the brilliant nation to the westward, par- 
ticularly among the wealthier families, cannot be denied. 
But so far as could be judged, there were not many 
Alsatians or Lorrainers who would have liked to be French 
again. 



THE CONQUERED PROVINCES 231 

Forty odd years of separation has not availed to 
make the inhabitants of the provinces Germans, but ; 
they have thoroughly unmade them Frenchmen. The 
industrious people of the Alsatian valleys and plain and 
the valleys of the Moselle and the Saar realize the enor- 
mous advantages which they have enjoyed for the prod- 9 
ucts of their land and factories through the union with the 
German states, and had it been possible to hold a pleb- 
iscite, they would undoubtedly have voted to retain 
these rather than return divided up into departments of 
France. On the other hand, there has been absolutely 
no sympathy with the poHtical greatness of the German 
empire. Pan-Germanism has had no followers among 
the native people of Alsace-Lorraine, who are convinced 
of the greatness of their own fatherland and eager to ob- 
tain every advantage for it. This particularism, whose 
slogan is " Elsass-Lothringen fur die Elsass-Lothringer!'' 
is the natural result of the pecuUar history of the coun- 
try. It has found expression, explicitly or implicitly, 
in the program of all the parties represented in the 
Strasburg Diet and the Reichstag. It has echoed in 
every tone of the provincial press and in private con- 
versation. It is, if one likes, a selfish policy, but it is 
there. The attitude of the intelligent Alsatian has been 
simply this: "We value the union with the empire on 
account of the solid benefits which the empire brings 
us ; and so long as it continues to enrich us by trade in 
our commodities and by building up our cities and 
factories, we are willing to do for it not only what ne- 
cessity demands, but to the Hmit to which self-interest 
will permit us to go. But for Germany as the bearer 
of the Germanic idea, for Germany overseas, for Ger- 
many as the romantic heir of the mediaeval empire, — 
for all of that we have no sympathy. That for which 
we do stand ready to do and die is Alsace-Lorraine." 

As events early in the European war showed, the idea 
long entertained in certain French quarters that the 



232 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

people of the provinces would raise a fire in the rear 
of a German army invading France was a dangerous 
illusion. The hope of treachery beside the hearthstone 
of an enemy or a rival is a dearly cherished dream among 
chauvinists and demagogues of every nation. Russian 
papers talked fondly of the rise of the Ruthenians in 
Bukowina and the Poles in Galicia in the event of a war 
with Austria-Hungary. Foreign enemies of Britain have 
counted in vain on the effective sympathy of the Irish ; 
and Spanish journals at the opening of the Cuban war 
asserted confidently that the firing of the first gun would 
bring the Southern states into rebellion in a renewed 
endeavor to realize the dream of secession ! The habits 
and discipline of forty years taught the people of 
Alsace-Lorraine to look upon the union with the German 
empire, in spite of rebellion at the ruthless "Prussian" 
system, as permanent and on the whole productive of 
great advantages. And while there is no denying that 
there are many families in which the traditions of French 
culture have been well preserved, much of the demand 
for the return of French instruction in the elementary 
schools which occurred in all the party programs (none 
mentioned the necessity for instruction in German !) 
and much of the club enthusiasm for the French language 
and French history was merely pose for effect on the 
" grand stand." A sentimental devotion to a lost cause 
is beautiful, but it is unfortunately all too ready for use 
as a weapon for demagogues. And of demagogues 
Alsace-Lorraine has had more than its share. Certain 
leaders were in the habit of making yearly pilgrimages 
to Paris, where they filled the ears of the Paris journalists 
with the kind of talk about the devotion of the lost 
provinces to France that delighted patriotic French 
readers and brought the advertising that was a political 
asset in Metz and Strasburg. In 191 2 the Reichstag 
leader, Wetterle, made a sort of triumphal tour through 
the eastern provinces of France, expressing himself to 



THE CONQUERED PROVINCES 233 

delighted French reporters in a way that might have 
been regarded as highly treasonable. 
/ As a matter of fact, the regermanization of Alsace is 
( fairly complete. The two centuries of French influence 
had Uttie effect on the peasant fanner, who remained 
through it all much the same as his cousin of the Baden 
hills across the Rhine. The maid of Strasburg or 
Miilhausen is still proud to say her Mon Dieu ! or Ca 
va sans dire! when togged out in her Sunday afternoon 
finery, and the village shopkeeper, chattering his native 
Allemanian with his customers, will still address the 
stranger with Pardon, m'seu! All of this is nothing 
more than the faint echo of a tradition. The peasant 
and factory worker, so far as the latter is not a Socialist, 
have been politically under the control of the ultra- 
montane leaders : as a class they have been as prosperous 
as in Westphalia or the Palatinate and seemingly as con- 
tented with German rule. Even around Metz, where 
the population was never in recent centuries, at least, 
German, and where the boundary line, drawn in 1871, 
sundering parish from parish put members of the same 
family on opposite sides, there seems to have been little 
popular discontent among the lower classes, except with 
the red tape of tariff restrictions. Indeed, the traveller 
along the road which leads from Mars le Tour to Grave- 
lotte or from St. Privat to Metz seems to notice some- 
thing which has become Germanic in the very landscape 
itself, a trim and ordered beauty which is not apparent 
westward on the upland toward Conflans or higher up 
the Moselle toward Nancy. The white kilometre stones, 
the well-pruned fruit trees, something in the very air of 
the trim fields even above Thionville testifies to the 
disciplining and ordering hand of German administration 
and schooling. 



CHAPTER XII 

The Polish Question 

In the whole history of the struggle of modern na- 
tionalities there is probably no chapter more pathetic 
than that which deals with the Polish people. Cer- 
tainly none in modern times has been used so often to 
point a moral and adorn a tale. It tells of a state which 
was destroyed through its own incapacity for existence 
and of a people which has risen slowly through fiery 
trials out of the ruins of its past to become a nationality, 
fired with a strong sense of national unity, yet seemingly 
without the possibility of becoming again a state. Ever 
since the abrupt end of the Polish oligarchical republic, 
through the three divisions of 1772, 1793 and 1795, the 
tragic fate of the Poles has been a favorite theme for 
historical analysis and poetic lament. The jealousy of 
the aristocracy, the incompetence of oligarchical gov- 
ernment, the venahty of the Polish parliament, the lack 
of a middle class, the debasement of the peasantry by 
the great landholders, — all have been fruitful themes 
for those who would justify the ways of history to man 
and explain why the decades which brought enlighten- 
ment and social and political enfranchisement to so 
much of Europe should have sealed the fate of Poland 
and divided out among the predatory powers of Europe 
a people that had won so many victories for the defense 
of race and Christianity. 

No wonder that the sympathy of the earlier decades 
of the nineteenth century, when men were still not too 
blase to thrill over the rights of man, went out to this 

234 



THE POLISH QUESTION 235 

race. The lost nation struggling nobly under the iron 
heel of Russia, Austria and Prussia stood only second to 
Greece in the hearts of the Hberty lovers of the age of 
Byron. Poets like Musset and Halleck sang of its 
wrongs. With the abortive revolt of the Russian Poles 
in 1 83 1, a swarm of refugees, some of them men of great 
personal charm and worth, fled to Switzerland, France 
and England; and the "noble Pole" made his entrance 
into literature as the representative of the highest per- 
sonal culture pursued by brute force, the patriotic son 
of a noble race, compelled by a despotic conqueror to 
"show his miseries in distant lands." Many of these 
wanderers brought with them, to be sure, a certain 
Ostro-European lack of social refinement that found its 
picture in Heinrich Heine's sarcastic fling at the 

" Zwei Polen aus der Polackei, — " 

But the "noble Pole" had possessed himself of the stage 
in the days of reaction that prepared the way for the 
revolution of 1848, and our grandfathers and grand- 
mothers wept over Jane Porter's Thaddeus of Warsaw 
with the enthusiasm of those to whom the preamble of 
the Declaration of Independence was still a religion. 

This enthusiasm for the rights of down-trodden peoples 
expressed itself nowhere more strongly than in Ger- 
many, and nowhere did the Poles in the first half of the 
last century enjoy greater sympathy. Graf von Platen's 
Songs of the Poles are the finest expression of feeling 
for a manacled people in the German language. The 
suppression of the Warsaw revolt in 1831 filled the 
German cities also with Polish refugees, and these found 
ready symipathy among a people who were themselves 
writhing under the iron heel of the Metternich reaction. 
A conspiracy among the Prussian Poles in Posen in 1846 
and their part in the soon strangled but bloody revolu- 
tion two years later in Prussia brought to their cause 
renewed sympathy from liberal hearts. Forty years 



236 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

later Bismarck recalled in the Reichstag how he had seen 
the Polish leader Mieroslawski, only recently pardoned 
for high treason, eclipse the Prussian sovereign as the 
real hero of the day in the famous procession which bore 
to their graves in the cemetery in Berlin the victims of 
the fight on the barricades. In popular assemblies, and 
in the abortive Frankfort Parliament, which sought to 
bring about German unity in those stormy days, the 
rights of the Poles, who had been attached to Prussia 
against their will, were the subject of warm sympathy 
and prolonged and agitated debate. 

The rights of the Poles were a part of the gospel of 
the rights of man, and in those days Prussian Hberalism 
had more sympathy for this and the other grand doctrines 
of the eighteenth century than it had for the brute force 
which must be employed toward the weak as well as the 
strong if Prussia was to fulfil her mission as the organizer 
of German unity. The old tradition of sympathy for 
Polish wrongs was still strong in liberal circles in 1863 
when Bismarck, then ruling in despite of a Liberal 
majority, combined with Russia to crush another Polish 
revolt, which had broken out in Warsaw and threatened 
to extend to Posen. For months the Iron Chancellor 
was forced to wage not only a diplomatic contest with 
Austria, France and England over his anti-Polish con- 
vention with the Czar, but also a bitter parliamentary 
war. Hatred of the Junker minister and sympathy 
with the Poles was still too strong, and the political 
sense still too undeveloped among Prussian Liberals 
for them to see that German rule in the Polish provinces 
was a necessity of life to the Fatherland. This idea 
grew only slowly after the realization of German unity 
and did not take complete possession of the patriotic 
consciousness until the Greater Polish movement had 
thoroughly established itself in the eastern marches. 

In order to understand the full difficulty of the prob- 
lem which has confronted Germany on the eastern border 



THE POLISH QUESTION 237 

it is necessary to look somewhat far afield. One must 
remember that nearly one-half of the Germans now living 
in Germany dwell on territory which one thousand 
years ago was not inhabited by Germans at all, and 
that the present struggle for predominance in the Polish 
provinces is but a chapter in the reflux of Germans tow- 
ards the east that has been going on since the time of 
Charlemagne. In the days of that monarch scarcely 
any Germans were to be found east of a Une drawn from 
Kiel on the southwest corner of the Baltic to Linz on the 
Danube and on down to the Puster Valley in Tyrol. 
Both capitals of the German-ruled empires, Berlin and 
Vienna, stand upon land which was at that time Slavic 
territory. Slavic still are the names of the rivers, cities 
and villages to the east of the Elbe and the Saale. 

The invasion by which the western Slavic tribes were 
conquered and absorbed was, in part at least, a peaceful 
one. Under the aggressive Saxon nobility the Germans 
won the lands immediately east of the Elbe and Saale 
from the Wends and Sorbs, and western German peas- 
ants were introduced as farmers and with the rise of the 
handicrafts, as artisans and merchants. The twelfth 
and thirteenth centuries saw the height of this coloniza- 
tion : before the latter had come to an end the Germanic 
wave had gathered great impetus through the coming 
of the Teutonic Knights, who at the invitation of a 
PoHsh duke diverted their sacred and profane zeal, which 
no longer found outlet in the crusades to Palestine, into 
a conquest of the heathen Prussians in the Baltic lands 
between Danzig and Riga. German historians claim 
that the conquest by the Teutonic Knights was less one 
of the sword than of the plough ; in their train, and by 
no means merely to the region which they administered 
as an ecclesiastical state, came not only farmers but 
artisans and traders as well, who as representatives of a 
higher culture established markets in the Polish lands 
and filtered through them far to the eastward. German 



238 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

energy founded the cities not only in Poland but in 
Lithuania and Livonia as well. In the fifteenth century 
German law prevailed and German trade flourished in 
every city between the Carpathians and the Baltic and 
German commerce extended its fingers far to the east 
into the heart of Russia. 

The bonds which held the Ordensland, as East Prussia 
was then called, to the German empire were moral 
rather than poHtical bonds; and the weakening of the 
mediaeval empire brought a corresponding strengthening 
of the Polish state, which had built itself up along the 
marches of Brandenburg and Pomerania. At Tarmen- 
berg in the East Prussian Hockerland in 141 o the black- 
white banner of the Teutonic Knights sank before the 
fiery onslaughts of Jagiello and his Slavic hordes, and 
the peace of Thorn half a century later brought all the 
lands watered by the Vistula and the Warthe under 
Polish overlordship. The Polish state at the time of 
its greatest extent stretched from the Silesian mountains 
to the Baltic, and marching with the present Prussian 
provinces of Silesia, Brandenburg and Pomerania, threw 
its boundaries far to the eastward over many Russian 
and Lithuanian provinces. Within its confines the Polish 
race was far from forming a majority, but with the 
aggressiveness of a lordly people ruled with severity 
over Russian, Lithuanian, German and Jew. The 
Germans as traders and artisans enjoyed a certain pro- 
tection, but the German-built cities had much to suffer 
from the greed of the Polish nobility. 

To these racial differences the Reformation brought a 
great religious contrast. The Germans of the North- 
east became for the most part Lutheran and Protestant 
under the influence of northern Germany; the Poles 
remained and remain overwhelmingly Roman CathoUc. 
The Counter-reformation under the leadership of the 
Society of Jesus fanned the rehgious hatred to white heat, 
and the lot of the Polish-ruled Germans through two cen- 



THE POLISH QUESTION 239 

turies was a hard one, made worse by the growing anarchy 
which accompanied the disintegration of the PoHsh state. 

The end of it all came with the partition between Russia, 
Austria and Prussia, just at a time when the age of en- 
lightenment seemed about to bring a modern form of 
government to Poland. In the meantime East Prussia 
had fallen to the Hohenzollerns and with the corona- 
tion of the first Prussian king at Konigsberg in 1701 
became the name-giver of the new Prussian monarchy, 
which came forth from the chrysalis of Brandenburg 
and its dependencies. Brandenburg-Prussia's rulers, 
from the Great Elector to Frederick the Great, recog- 
nized the value of the territory to the east of the Oder 
and the Vistula, and brought into it crowds of colonists 
from all parts of Germany and many sections of the 
Romance world as farmers and villagers, to reclaim waste 
land and strengthen the German element from the Baltic 
southward. Especially the builder-statesman Frederick 
the Great found much to do in the lands which fell to his 
share as booty from the first partition of Poland. In a 
memorable account of his first tour of inspection of the 
annexed provinces he finds the economic condition of the 
country deplorable, "the inhabitants as lacking in 
civilization as the Iroquois of Canada." For years he 
devoted a great part of his energy and strained the re- 
sources of his state in draining swamps and restraining 
rivers in the province of West Prussia, and in bringing 
in and settling thousands of German colonists in every 
section of the eastern marches. 

In the years which intervened between the end of the 
Polish state in 1795 and the Congress of Vienna in 181 5, 
Napoleon had infused new hope into the hearts of Polish 
patriots. By his erection of the Grand Duchy of War- 
saw and his clever appeals to the patriotism of the Poles, 
their leaders caught a new hope of Polish freedom and 
unity. This hope was stifled by the reactionary hands 
of the diplomats at Vienna. When the Congress arose 



240 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

from its complicated labors, it had greatly reduced 
Prussia's share from the three divisions of Poland in 
favor of Russia, lea\'ing the German kingdom as a net 
result of the transaction the two provinces of Posen 
and West Prussia, including, roughly estimated, 350,000 
Germans and 450,000 Poles. The PoHsh patriots who be- 
sieged the Congress with petitions for a resurrection of 
their nation were dismissed with the promise that the in- 
terests of their nationality would be safeguarded in the 
administration, a promise which was repeated in the mani- 
festo issued by Frederick William III on taking posses- 
sion of the two provinces. Such promises, which are 
made only to soothe the feelings of a party whose claims 
cannot be further considered, usually mean only so 
much as the magnanimity of the one is wilKng to give 
or the power and insistence of the other to enforce. 
In the case of the Poles in Prussia an effort seems to 
have been made to carry out in spirit what had been 
promised them. 

Since 181 5 Prussia's policy in these provinces has 
varied between the widest extremes of conciliation and 
repression. At first every effort was made to make of 
the Poles patriotic subjects of Prussia. Russia was the 
much-feared neighbor; and the Poles hated Russia at 
the time much more than they did either of the other 
predatory powers. It was thought that they might be 
won by kindness to become a strong bulwark against 
Muscovite aggressions on the eastern boundary. The 
administration of Posen was divided between the Ger- 
mans and the Poles, Polish was accorded full rights in 
the schools, and an effort was made to win the Polish 
aristocracy for the Prussian civil service. The years 
1830-31 brought a sudden awakening. A revolt among 
the Russian Poles broke out in Warsaw, and imme- 
diately it became apparent that a widespread conspiracy 
existed and that a serious Polish problem threatened the 
three powers. An enthusiasm for the resurrection of 



THE POLISH QUESTION 241 

Poland as it existed before 1772 had taken possession 
of wide circles of the nobility and clergy; and Prussia 
had reason to fear that the contagion had already crossed 
her borders. The Prussian statesmen abandoned the 
policy of conciliation and again took up the work of 
germanization through the colonizing of loyal subjects. 
The Poles were evicted from offices of administration in 
the provinces, the crown granted money for bringing in 
German settlers, and until the accession of Frederick 
William IV in 1840 the Polish national propaganda was 
closely watched and sternly repressed. With the ro- 
manticism belonging to his character this monarch took 
up again the work of conciliating the Poles. Why should 
not the race which furnished such good citizens in upper 
Silesia go through a similar development in West Prussia 
and Posen? Once more the government sought to 
win over the nobility, once more administrative offices 
in the provinces were open to ambitious young Poles. 
This time the answer was the Polish conspiracy of 1846 
in Posen and the uprising two years later in the same 
province, when the Polish leaders joined hands with the 
radical leaders of Berlin. Even this did not lead the 
Prussian administration to any vigorous measures of 
repression. The growing hatred of the Poles for the 
Germans on the eastern marches was watched with 
fear ; but even Bismarck beheved PoHsh discontent con- 
fined to the nobility, and nobody foresaw the power of 
the popular movement which still lay buried in the 
Polish folk-soul. 

The revolt in Russian Poland in 1863 aroused Bis- 
marck to the most decisive action to prevent its spread- 
ing to the Prussian provinces ; but the mighty problems 
which then lay before him, — the army reorganization, 
the Schleswig-Holstein question with the elimination of 
Austria from the German confederacy, and finally the 
war with France, gave Prussia's statesman enough and 
more than enough to do without the relatively unim- 



242 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

portant Polish question. The KuUurkampf began in the 
Polish provinces and was directed there as much against 
the nationalist propaganda of the Polish clergy as against 
the practices of the Roman Catholic church ; but it was 
not until the new empire had begun to see light through 
its greatest international difficulties and economic prob- 
lems that Bismarck seriously laid hand upon the Polish 
situation. In the meantime, however, the folk-soul of 
the Polish inhabitants of the eastern provinces had be- 
come thoroughly awakened, and opposed to the Prussian 
administration a spirit and an organization which not 
even the most aggressive measures were able to hold in 
check. Up to the time of the formation of the empire 
in 1 87 1 the poHtical opposition of the Poles was a matter 
of the large landholders, who with the clergy had main- 
tained the fight for the national cause. The peasantry 
were mere tools in the hands of their spiritual and tem- 
poral leaders. Germans and Jews held the trade and 
slow-budding industry of the provinces. After 1871, 
however, the Poles began the erection of a social and 
economic system which was in three decades to make 
them independent of their German neighbors and to 
mobilize every energy in defense of the national cause. 
Much earlier, indeed, gifted spirits among the Poles 
had recognized the necessity for a long advance in culture 
before their people could hope to make a successful fight 
against the Germans for control of the provinces. "Not 
until we Poles shall have become better, more cultured 
and richer than the Germans will the dominion be ours," 
declared Count Raczynski to his compatriots in Posen 
in 1842, and these words may be regarded as the slogan 
of the Polish advance since that time. Out of this 
spirit arose the Marcinkowski Association in 1842, the 
first and the greatest of the numerous organizations for 
the creation of a Polish culture. By the estabHshment 
of scholarships for the training of bright young men for 
the "free" professions, and later for the trades, and 



THE POLISH QUESTION 243 

by the furtherance of a national press and of Polish 
literature, it took the lead in the building up of a trained 
middle class with a strongly nationaKst spirit. Every 
village with even a fair minority of Poles came to have 
its Polish doctor and lawyer and the lesser cities their 
Polish paper, and an independent middle class arose 
which quickly wrested political leadership from the 
landed gentry and shared with the clergy the duty of 
stirring the peasantry to vigorous national feeling. The 
movement soon jumped the confines of Posen and West 
Prussia. Societies similar to the Marcinkowski Associa- 
tion were formed in East Prussia, upper Silesia and even 
Pomerania, wherever pure Slavic blood flowed, assist- 
ing bright young men and girls to a higher education 
for the leadership of their people. 

Hand in hand with the intellectual rise of the German 
Poles went their rise in the economic field. Here the 
early development of the empire brought them golden 
opportunity in two ways. The industrial prosperity of 
the West had already begun its forward movement 
and now went ahead by leaps and bounds. As a result 
of the better conditions of Hfe prevaiHng in these districts, 
there began at first slowly, and then gathering momentum 
until it took on the form of a mighty natural phenomenon, 
the migration of German labor from the eastern marches 
to the western cities. Men who had been soldiers in the 
war with France or who had served their miHtary appren- 
ticeship in the West followed the call of greater oppor- 
tunity and a higher culture away from their native East, 
with its antiquated semi-feudal labor laws. The result 
was that the landholders of the eastern marches very 
soon began to feel the need of farm labor. They them- 
selves had in the sixties and early seventies, riding upon 
the wave of agricultural prosperity of that time, bought 
themselves land-poor from the bankrupt PoHsh aris- 
tocracy ; now besides growing competition from abroad 
and increasing difficulty in securing loans, they found 



244 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

themselves facing a severe labor problem. It is cer- 
tainly no reflection on their German patriotism that they 
met the issue as best they might by the importation of 
seasonal workers on an ever-increasing scale from Russian 
Poland and Galida. Coming at first as harvest workers 
and returning each autumn to their homes, these sons 
and daughters of the poverty-stricken East crossed the 
borders each year in ever-growing numbers ; and before 
the new empire was a dozen years old, they had filled 
the labor sheds of the eastern marches of Prussia and had 
begun to make themselves fast as farm laborers and even 
as permanent residents in the cities, crowding unpleas- 
antly those workers of German birth who had clung to 
the soil. Sdchsengdnger they were called, and they began 
to be a familiar sight in the harvest fields west of the 
Oder and the Elbe and even penetrated into the agri- 
cultural districts of Westphalia and the Rhineland. It 
was plain that a genuine migration had begun, like the 
invasion of the early Christian centuries, when Slavic 
hordes occupied the lands left vacant by the Bur- 
gundians and Vandals, Bavarians and Swabians, who 
had followed the lure of the West. 

The Prussian government took alarm, and in 1885 
Bismarck shipped back to their earher homes in Russia 
and Austria some thirty thousand of these unwelcome 
invaders. Stringent regulations were adopted governing 
the importation of labor from the east and fixing definitely 
the period of stay in Prussia, so that while they still came, 
several hundred thousand yearly, as seasonal workers, 
they were carefuUy watched to prevent their spending 
the winter in Germany or by any means acquiring a 
residence. In cultivation and harvest times one might 
see them working in the fields, from the farthest eastern 
border with diminishing numbers as far as Hanover and 
Westphalia, long picturesque lines of bowed figures 
among the wheat shocks or potato rows. On Sundays 
in colored, neckerchief and quaint garb they crowded 



THE POLISH QUESTION 245 

the Roman Catholic churches in even the most solidly 
Protestant sections of Saxony and Mecklenburg, un- 
developed material of a great Slavic culture yet to come. 
To the patriotic German they have been a hard necessity 
for his agricultural prosperity, for even under the severe 
restrictions governing them, they have given considerable 
moral support to the Polish propaganda. One East 
Prussian rural chamber at the beginning of the new- 
century called on the government to import African 
natives as less dangerous to the German future ! 

The other stimulus to the Polish cause from the form- 
ing of the German empire was the rise of Pan-Slavism. 
This movement which sprang up in opposition to a 
united and all too prosperous Germanism, immediately 
caught the Poles and was transformed by them into a 
Greater Polish movement. Dreams of a renaissance of 
the ancient Polish state in its widest extent began to 
transfer themselves from the minds of the elite among 
the nobility and clergy and to become the common 
property of the entire people. The growth of this idea 
went hand in hand with the growth of PoHsh culture: 
its bearers were not merely the nobiUty and clergy but 
the newly created middle class as well. Under the 
stimulus of this movement the new PoUsh press grew up. 
In Thorn and Graudenz and Danzig and Stargard, as 
well as in the cities of the province of Posen, Polish 
newspapers arose and soon found wide circulation. After 
1890 these became the leaders of the radical wing of the 
Greater Poland party, carrying on a restless propaganda 
not only by razor-edged articles of agitation, but also 
by the issuance of reading books on Polish history and 
literature and Polish song books, and by constant appeals 
to the national idea. The hatred which had been slowly 
growing up between Pole and German in the eastern 
marches for a hundred years was fanned into a bright 
flame by this propaganda. Every Pole who could read 
began to feel himself a warrior and if necessary a martyr 



246 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

for the Greater Polish cause. A new feeKng of solidarity 
bound the long sundered fragments of the nation to- 
gether for an aggressive forward movement. 

The leadership of this movement remained, however, 
in the hands of the clergy. Ninety per cent of the 
German Poles are Roman Catholics. A remnant of the 
ancient Polish kingdom still exists in the fact that the 
Archbishop of Breslau includes within his diocese 
both German and Austrian territory. The Polish 
clergy enjoy a respect and obedience from their parish- 
ioners which gives them enormous powers of organization 
and control. The influence of the clergy in the Greater 
Polish cause was first observed in the denationalization 
of German Catholics living in Polish neighborhoods, a 
movement which went on unchecked for many years. 
Under the ministrations of the Polish priest and under 
the pressure of his Polish neighbors and coreligionists 
the German farmer had to wage a determined fight to 
retain his nationality, and in many cases gradually 
became Polish in manners and ideas and even in language 
and in name. In 1884 there were 759 children in the 
elementary schools of the province of Posen bearing 
German names in whose famihes only Polish was spoken. 
Thus the descendants of many a colonist of Frederick 
the Great speak only Polish and answer to a name in 
which the German vowels have given place to Slavic 
consonants. 

A general Polonizing of the eastern marches seemed 
on the way when in 1886 Bismarck went before the 
Landtag with propositions for strengthening the German 
element. How far the process had already gone in the 
province of Posen was shown by figures cited in that 
year. In the twenty-five years preceding the Poles had 
increased by two hundred thousand while the German 
growth was only four thousand. How much of this 
tremendous growth of the Polish element was due to an 
aggressive Polonizing of the Germans could not be 



THE POLISH QUESTION 247 

determined. Once thoroughly convinced of the danger, 
the Prussian government went vigorously to work to 
meet it, employing the same method which had brought 
such effective results since the days of the Teutonic 
Knights, the settlement of peasant farmers into the dis- 
tricts where a massing of Poles seemed imminent. For 
this purpose the Royal Colonization Commission was 
formed, with an initial appropriation of twenty-five 
million dollars for the purchase of land in the provinces 
of Posen and West Prussia, and the settlement of Ger- 
mans thereon. The work of the Commission, pushed 
vigorously in the earlier years, dragged during the 
Caprivi regime in the early nineties, when the govern- 
ment ogled with the Poles and traded conciliatory 
methods in the eastern provinces for parliamentary 
support of Caprivi's military bill. After that the Com- 
mission got new footing and went forward with its work 
with an energy which occasionally flagged in the face of 
Polish and Catholic protests, but was in the main con- 
sistent. Its work was most urgently furthered in the 
years 1902-08 under the administration of the Chan- 
cellor Biilow, an ardent supporter of the colonization 
policy. In spite of the frenzied opposition of the Polish 
fraction, which has counted on an average thirteen 
members in the Prussian Diet, and the stern disapproval 
of the Centre, which for purposes of Catholic solidarity 
has made common cause with the Catholic Poles, further 
appropriations were voted until at the end of 191 2 the 
Commission had disbursed over one hundred and fifty 
million dollars and settled nearly twenty thousand 
German families in the two provinces. 

The ultimate success of the colonization policy was 
variously judged. It is true that the greater part of 
the land purchased came from German owners, less 
than 30 per cent having been acquired by the Commis- 
sion from PoKsh owners; true also that much of this 
Polish land had to be bought at a high figure and that 



248 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

at least a part of the purchase money was used by the 
sellers to buy still greater tracts of land for their com- 
patriots in the other eastern provinces. Certain it is 
also that in spite of the work of the Royal Commission, 
the Poles have in recent years acquired more land from 
the Germans in the two provinces than the Commission 
was able to purchase from Poles — statistics published 
for the years 1 896-1 908 put the net winnings of the 
Poles at 84,503 hectares.^ Later figures have not been 
published, — not an encouraging circumstance, — but 
in the course of a debate in the Landtag it was admitted 
by the government that the Polish net gain in the years 
1896-1911 was over 100,000 hectares. What the Polish 
purchases amounted to in the other eastern provinces 
during the same period cannot be given with certainty ; 
such statistics as are available show that the Polish gain 
in land there was even more rapid. Thus in East Prussia 
the net gain from 1900 to 191 2 was 27,779 hectares; in 
Silesia the net winnings of the Poles 1 906-11 were 
13,270 hectares, and in three "circles" of northeast 
Pomerania in the same period 1789 hectares. Natu- 
rally the Poles opposed to the work of the Commission 
every device which national solidarity and religious zeal 
could suggest. The Pole who sold his land to a German 
must be prepared to face the anathema of the village 
priest and the boycott of his Polish neighbors. The 
watchful correspondent of the nearest Polish paper 
reported his name to be published for general execration ; 
no neighbor would lend a hand or horse to move his ef- 
fects, curses and perhaps a broken head awaited his visit 
to the village tavern. 

On the other hand, many of those students best 
qualified to speak — and among them must be included 
the former Chancellor Biilow — believe that the work 
of the Royal Commission has notably strengthened the 
German cause in the eastern provinces. Certainly any 

^ A hectare is 2.471 acres. 



THE POLISH QUESTION 249 

movement which in the first twenty-five years of its 
existence brought into the eastern marches over one 
hundred thousand Germans and settled them perma- 
nently as small farmers, was worth, from a political 
and military standpoint, many times the outlay. The 
settlers must in the main be possessed of some small 
capital for the equipment of their farms, and their coming 
has brought increased wealth to certain sections both in 
cattle breeding and land culture. In a country where 
so much of the land is held in large estates the introduc- 
tion of so many small farmers — the average size of the 
Commission's allotment has been twelve hectares — 
could not but be of great social and economic value. 
And while the fight between the Commission and the 
Poles through their banks for the possession of the land 
artificially inflated land values in certain districts of the 
provinces, the economic rivalry of the two races pro- 
moted the general prosperity of the provinces to a 
marked degree. 

One necessary but unfortunate result of the coloniza- 
tion policy was the fanning of the hatred between Ger- 
mans and Poles in the eastern marches to white heat. 
To this feeling another circumstance made a note- 
worthy contribution, the founding in 1894 of the "As- 
sociation of the Eastern Marches," the Deutscher Ost- 
marken Verein. The impetus for this organization came 
from the gathering of a number of Germans from Posen 
around the aged Bismarck, then living in retirement on 
his Pomeranian estates. Under the ring of the old 
Chancellor's eloquence the Association immediately 
began a vigorous campaign to support the German ele- 
ment in the East. Its local chapters covered the entire 
debatable territory; and under the leadership of men 
of great influence and devotion to the patriotic cause it 
watched the Polish agitation and by its own and govern- 
mental means sought to checkmate it. By group meet- 
ings and by its annual "day," held in one of the large 



250 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

eastern cities, it awakened enthusiasm and strengthened 
weak knees in the Polish districts. It published a 
monthly, The Eastern Marches, issued from time to time 
historical and statistical pamphlets, organized lectures, 
inspired newspaper articles and sought in every way to 
foster German culture in the "fighting district." 

Supported by this and other patriotic societies, the 
government received from the Landtag new weapons 
for fighting the Slavic advance. In 1904 the right to 
settle permanently in the disputed territory was made 
dependent on the approval of the provincial authorities, 
who might naturally be expected to exclude Polish 
invaders.^ The object of the law, however, so far as it 
related to the acquisition of land, was largely nullified 
by the ingenuity of the Polish "parcellation banks," 
which bought up great estates and sold them in small 
lots to the adjoining Polish proprietors. This move and 
the rising price of land were met by the " Expropriation 
Law " 2 of 1908, borrowed from the British procedure in 
Ireland, which authorized the condemnation of land 
for colonization purposes. Although the amount which 
might be acquired by this means in one year was closely 
limited, the law was so widely condemned as "special 
legislation " that no attempt was made to put it in force 
until the fall of 191 2, and then only on a very small scale. 
A paragraph of the " Association Law " of 1907, forbid- 
ding the use of a foreign language in public meetings, was 
directly aimed at the Poles, but through Liberal opposi- 
tion it was so greatly modified as largely to fail of its 
purpose. A further link in the chain which the Prussian 
lawgivers sought to forge across the Polish advance was 
the " Confirmation Law " ^ of 1908, which authorized the 
purchase on government account of any land coming 
on the market in the provinces outside of the two most 
hotly contested (Posen and West Prussia) at 85 per cent 

^ Ansiedlungs-Gesetz. ^ Enteignungs-Gesetz. 

' Befesiigungs-Gesetz. 



THE POLISH QUESTION 251 

of the assessed value. In every province also private ef- 
forts seconded the government through the organization 
of societies for the bringing in of German farmers and 
the succor of those financially involved, for the importa- 
tion of German artisans and laborers and the securing 
of suitable dwellings, etc. 

To these measures the Poles opposed an organization 
which grew more solid each year, infused with an energy 
that knew no discouragement and a national patriotism 
that shrank at no sacrifice. In the years of struggle 
the influence of the nobility, always inclined to conciha- 
tory methods, gave place to the control by a radical- 
democratic element which hesitated at no violence of 
expression. The nation, which is also a political party, 
was represented in the Reichstag of 191 2 by twenty 
members, in the Prussian Landtag of 1913 by twelve; 
its press spread by degrees a network of agitation centres 
over the eastern marches and the whole Rhine-West- 
phalian industrial district. The spirit of the Polish press 
may be characterized by a quotation from the Gnesen 
Lech of September, 1911, showing the attitude of the 
patriotic Poles towards those members of their race who 
sell their land to Germans : 

"If the seller wishes to shake your hand, then turn 
away and spit on the ground as before the greatest of 
villains ; if he wishes to enter your house, lock the door 
in his face. May he live in loneliness hke Cain ! May 
the curse of the Polish people weigh upon him till death ! 
May no one follow his coffin, no one pray for the repose 
of his soul ! " 

To the efforts of a strong and aggressive press must be 
added those of the Polish clergy. A struggle between 
two races is unfortunate at best : it becomes most disas- 
trous when intermingled, as here, with religious hatred. 
The Poles, as has been noted, are more than nine-tenths 
Roman CathoHc, and place themselves with remarkable 
discipKne under the orders of their clergy. It must be 



252 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

remarked, however, that this is because to the rank and 
file of the nation church and national cause are com- 
pletely identified. The press cannot find words bitter 
enough to describe a priest who shows himself weak or 
wobbly in defense of the national Polish cause. It 
would be wrong to say that every Polish priest is a Pole 
before he is a churchman, but it is certainly true that 
the clergy have fostered the national cause with the 
greatest zeal. The late Archbishop Kopp of Breslau 
and other prelates suspected of anti-Polish sentiments 
were at times the object of the bitterest invective. In 
spite of the support given the Poles by their coreligion- 
ists of the Centre party, the Poles robbed the Centre of 
five Reichstag electoral districts in upper Silesia in 1907. 
The Royal Commission early found that it was highly 
desirable to settle Protestants in the debatable districts, 
for the reason that the Catholic colonist, finding it 
difficult to obtain the ministrations of German priests, 
was dependent upon the Polish clergy and ran a strong 
risk of becoming denationalized. 

The clergy also have been the leaders in the forma- 
tion of the numerous societies which link the Poles into 
such powerful organizations for defense and offense in the 
pohtical, industrial, commercial and social world. Secret 
international societies like the Liga polska, a far-flung 
political union with groups wherever radical Poles are 
found working for the reerection of the fatherland, and 
the Zet, a radical student organization, are said to be 
strongly represented in Germany and interlocked through 
identical officeholders with the Prussian-Polish social, 
athletic and industrial organizations. Within Prussia 
Polish societies multiplied with bewildering rapidity 
after the beginning of the twentieth century. The Po- 
lish agricultural and industrial laborers were organized 
in the St. Isidore Clubs, for the Sachsengdnger, and the 
Polish Catholic Workmen's Clubs, both groups under 
the leadership of clergymen, besides a number of unions 



THE POLISH QUESTION 253 

for the various branches of industry. The Polish youth 
were enrolled in the Sokol ("Falcon"), athletic clubs 
with strongly patriotic spirit. The Straz, founded in 
Posen in 1905, won immediate success as an economic- 
industrial organization. Rural workers were organized 
into hundreds of rural clubs. The Rolnik, associations 
leagued among themselves for the purchase and sale of 
agricultural products and for supplying the farmers 
with their necessities, made the PoHsh peasant largely 
independent of the German middleman. There are also 
merchants' associations, large landholders' associations, 
etc. Many of these organizations are under the control 
of the clergy ; each group has its own press, and nearly 
all are political in tendency and interlocked with the 
PoHsh political parties. They are radical in their nature, 
less from any affiliation with the international secret 
revolutionary organizations of the Poles than because 
they foster a spirit of racial solidarity and boiling patriot- 
ism for the Polish cause. No wonder the Germans speak 
of the "sleeping army," which according to an old Polish 
legend is some day to arise and set the Polish nation 
free. 

Just where the anti- German campaign will ultimately 
land, even the leaders among the Poles have been un- 
certain. For the present, they are content to fight the 
Prussian state with economic weapons. For genera- 
tions the Poles have been dependent on German industry 
and German capital, in recent years they have been 
rapidly making themselves independent of both. Polish 
banks hoard capital, not merely from the eastern 
provinces, but from Polish workers in Westphalian mill 
and mine and from their brothers and sisters in America. 
Wherever a Polish centre was estabhshed in the debatable 
territory, there arose a branch of the PoHsh "Folk 
Bank" {banca ludowy) to supply the money for PoUsh 
undertakings, principally for the purchase of land from 
Germans. The work of the "parcellation banks" in 



254 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

circumventing the "Settlement Law" by the division 
of great estates among the Poles has been noted. In 
the early nineties a priest of Posen, Wawrzyniak, founded 
a "League of Polish Societies of Industry and Com- 
merce," which by the end of 191 2 had already articulated 
together 279 societies for industry and commerce, with 
134,000 members, for economic offense and defense. 

These efforts have not confined themselves to the 
eastern marches, but have extended, as has been noted, 
all over the eastern provinces and to more than 400,000 
Poles whom the coal, iron and steel industries attracted 
to Westphalia and the adjacent Rhineland. In upper 
Silesia dwell more than a million people of Polish race, 
known in Germany as the "Water Poles." This district 
ceased to be a part of the Polish state in 11 63; for 
centuries its people lived contentedly under German 
rule, and they were often cited by Prussian statesmen as 
an example of a PoHsh branch which had allowed itself 
to be peacefully absorbed. Early in the eighties, how- 
ever, they began to be infected with the Greater Polish 
idea and they have since then been completely won for 
the PoHsh cause, so that thousands of them began to 
make an annual pilgrimage to the tombs of the ancient 
PoHsh kings in Cracow in Austrian Galicia. Urgent 
efforts were made to mobilize other Slavic fragments in 
eastern Prussia for the Polish cause : the Kassubs, a 
Wendish fragment, dwelling on a strip of territory run- 
ning back from the Baltic coast into West Prussia and 
Pomerania, and the Masurs, a mixture of Slavic and 
German elements in the southern part of the province of 
East Prussia. The former are, like the Poles, for the 
most part Roman Catholics, the latter overwhelmingly 
Protestant. The vernacular of both of these Slavic frag- 
ments differs from PoHsh, but not so much as to make 
intercourse impossible. In both of these districts, in- 
cluding several hundred thousand people, the Poles 
have made active propaganda since the middle eighties, 



THE POLISH QUESTION 255 

seeking by the establishment of a Polish press, by 
founding branches of the ''Folk Bank" and by the 
organization of clubs to awaken the Slavic conscious- 
ness. Among the evangeUcal Masurians they have 
thus far met with small success. The Kassubs, an 
impoverished and economically insignificant race, ac- 
cepted the PoHsh propaganda with enthusiasm and thus 
afforded the Greater Polish idea a firm footing on the 
shores of the Baltic. In Westphalia, whither the Poles 
have streamed since the middle of the seventies, they 
have completely sundered themselves from the Germans, 
and firmly organized into a great number of societies and 
clubs, and led by an aggressive press, have preserved 
their language and racial identity. They still regard 
the eastern marches as their true home, and a consider- 
able part of their savings has gone to capitalize the 
struggle for land in the debatable territory. 

The success of the Poles in this land struggle has 
already been noted. Their progress in the conquest of 
the smaller villages and cities of the East, while not so 
easy to show by statistics, has nevertheless been very 
real. Their deadliest weapon here has been the boycott, 
an arm before which the Germans are comparatively 
helpless, partly from a lack of organization and partly 
because their fighting spirit has awakened so slowly. 
The Poles are passed masters in the use of the boycott, 
and have worked therewith the greatest damage to 
German trade and industry in the smaller towns of the 
debatable land. Trained by his press and admonished 
by clergy and society, the Pole buys only of Poles. He 
consults only a Polish lawyer or physician or dentist. 
It never occurs to him to drink his glass in a German 
tavern or patronize a German restaurant. The Pole 
who illuminates his house for the king's birthday or 
affiliates with the former members of his regiment in a 
German veterans' association draws upon himself bitter 
words from the pulpit and press and social ostracism 



2S6 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

from his Polish neighbors. Polish young men and 
maidens are warned against "mixed marriages," even 
with Catholic Germans, as a treachery to their nation. 
An ever watchful correspondent stands ready to report 
to the nearest paper the name of the girl who buys her 
hat from a German or Jewish store or the young man 
who frequents German society. 

This boycott, which has led occasionally to a sort of 
terrorism, especially during electoral campaigns, has 
ruined the German shopkeepers in many small towns 
of the East, for the German buys where he can buy 
most cheaply. To begin with, the Pole has a tremendous 
advantage in the possession of two languages, for while 
the Pole must learn German in the school and the army, 
very few Germans command PoUsh. The invasion of a 
town in the eastern marches by Poles goes on as follows : 
When a Polish tradesman finds his way thither, he is not 
immediately recognized as a Pole. By thrift and strict 
attention to business he wins the respect of all classes. 
In his place of business he gradually supplants all the 
Germans with Poles. Soon there come a Polish tailor 
and a Polish shoemaker. A Polish tavern opens its doors 
and develops erelong into a good hotel. A Polish phy- 
sician and a Polish lawyer follow. The press and the 
priest take care that Poles spend their money only with 
Poles. Polish clubs begin to flourish and German trades- 
men begin to employ Polish clerks and even to acquire a 
little business Polish themselves. With the growth in 
numbers the Poles grow more aggressive ; they proceed 
to drive the Germans from the parish council, which 
through their superior organization they are often able 
to control. Perhaps at the Landtag election a political 
row occurs, and Prussian soldiers are sent, whose stay 
of course contributes still further to the Polish cash boxes. 
In the meantime Polish children are increasing in the 
schools and even begin to throng the higher schools. 
The patriotic German is getting into serious financial 



THE POLISH QUESTION 257 

trouble. Things may go so far that he cannot hold a 
political meeting because all the halls are in Polish 
hands. If he ventures to propose publicly a toast to the 
Emperor or sing " Deutschland ilber alles," he may start 
a riot and bring on his business an absolute and destruc- 
tive boycott. Gradually he yields to superior force and 
hides his German sympathies in the background before 
Polish terrorism, or even, if he is a Roman Catholic, 
allows his family to become gradually Polonized. This, 
or practically this, was the history of Schwetz on the 
Vistula after 1900, and a similar story might be told 
of other small cities in West Prussia, as well as in Posen 
and parts of East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia. 

Cases of violence have been rare. The Pole learned 
his lesson in 1848 and 1863, and knows that any appeal 
to arms could for the present only hinder the advance of 
the "sleeping army." Of the abrupt military methods 
of the Prussian administration he has occasionally had a 
taste during electoral rows or as the result of too much 
display of PoHsh patriotism on a German national hoU- 
day. An instance of the readiness and efficiency of the 
Prussian bureaucracy when something tangible presents 
itself was the school strike of 1906-07, a chapter in the 
struggle for the maintenance of the PoUsh language. 
Up to 1872 Polish and German had fought with varying 
success for predominance in the schools of the Polish 
provinces; after that German was made the language 
of instruction everywhere, Polish being retained, with 
some interruptions, merely as an elective subject in the 
advanced classes. In Germany religious instruction is 
given in the schools and the religious question of course 
lurks somewhere behind every struggle over school 
poUcy. It has been shown how closely religion and 
national patriotism are intertwined in the Pohsh soul, 
and it is not to be wondered at that the Poles have 
made their most determined stand in defense of religious 
instruction in their own tongue. By a regulation of the 



258 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

Prussian Department of Education, adopted during the 
KuUurkampf, it was provided that all children capable 
of understanding German to a sufficient degree should 
receive their religious instruction in that language. In 
practice it came about that the children of Polish families 
who had been permitted to learn the catechism in the 
language of their fathers in the lower classes, were trans- 
ferred with increasing years to religious classes in Ger- 
man. Constant irritation was the result, mounting with 
the passing years, the Polish clergy taking a leading part 
against requiring the Httle ones to "learn the sacred 
religion in the hateful German language." This agitation 
reached its cUmax in the fall of 1906, when in imitation of 
a similar movement in Russia, children in a number of 
schools in the Polish provinces under instruction from 
their parents refused to answer questions on the catechism 
in German or to learn German hymns. Beginning 
directly after the long vacation in 1906, the strike was 
vigorously fanned by the PoHsh press and clergy until 
it involved in the provinces of Posen and West Prussia 
over one thousand schools, including some 60,000 scholars. 
The tone of the Polish press and clergy became ex- 
ceedingly bitter. The Prussian officials were compared 
to Herod and Pharaoh ; they were charged with misusing 
religious instruction for political purposes ; the enforced 
instruction in German was a "sinful desecration of the 
Catholic rehgion," "a tyranny over the conscience in 
which only the devil in the gorge of hell and the Prussian 
government could find satisfaction"; the government, 
"having robbed the Polish people of all it holds dear, now 
seeks to rob it of its last treasure, the holy faith." The 
children were heralded as martyrs to faith and nation; 
the parents were promised the special protection of the 
saints for their fight against the Germanizing and Luther- 
izing of their children. Prayers were said for the striking 
boys and girls, who on more than one occasion marched 
directly from the school to church, where a mass was 



THE POLISH QUESTION 259 

said for them. Under such urging, the youngsters left 
nothing to be desired in the ardor of their opposition, 
greeting the religious teacher with Polish songs and 
adjurations and strewing the roadsides with the frag- 
ments of their German catechisms. 

The Prussian school administration proceeded against 
the strike with all of the vigor which its strongly cen- 
tralized system makes possible. The school regulations 
discourage corporal punishment; but the youngsters 
were "kept back," deprived of all privileges and threat- 
ened with a loss of promotion ; and when that did not 
avail, the temporal arm was invoked against their parents. 
Fines were imposed, and parents who, to save their chil- 
dren from threats and strenuous treatment by the 
teachers, had kept the youngsters at home received in 
some cases considerable terms in prison. As a final 
resort the ministry turned to a measure which has on 
more than one occasion reduced refractory school dis- 
tricts in Prussia to obedience : additional teachers were 
appointed, whose pay fell heavily upon the taxpayers 
in rural and smaller urban communities. As a result 
of this vigorous treatment, the strike began to give way 
in a few months, and by the Easter hoHdays of 1907 was 
practically suppressed, leaving behind a bitter heritage 
of hate which will burn fiercely for decades in the eastern 
marches when the boys and girls involved have become 
men and women. 

The strike had therefore its serious as well as its pa- 
thetic and ludicrous side. As an episode in the Poli^- 
German struggle it is illuminating. That the Poles 
actually believe that their sacred rights are invaded by 
the religious instruction of their children in German 
cannot be doubted. The Germans, on the other hand, 
had abundant and humiliating experience before 1872 
with the denationaHzing which takes place when German 
and PoHsh are given equal rights in the schools. Whether 
from the readiness with which the German assumes for- 



26o THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

eign culture, — both a strength and a weakness of the 
race, — whether because of the Pohsh means of agitation, 
which have been sufficiently described, it is certain that 
before the KuUurkampf thousands of Germans were 
swallowed up so completely in the Polish race that to- 
day even their names are scarcely recognizable. On the 
other hand, the German is also certainly justified in 
pointing to the benefits which the German elementary 
school has brought to the Polish provinces. Even a 
short journey through the Austrian province of GaHcia 
or Russian Poland shows the heaven-wide superiority of 
the German Pole in cultural values. The percentage of 
illiteracy among males in the province of Posen fell from 
41 per cent in 1841 to 15.59 P^r cent in 1871, 0.12 per 
cent in 1901 and 0.05 in 1905. Indeed, the Germans 
claim with justice that the fight which the Poles are so 
successfully waging against them would be far less 
significant were it not for the matchless organization of 
the German Volksschule and its graduate institution, the 
two years' military service. 

The most unfortunate side of this racial struggle has 
been touched on several times already: it is embitter- 
ment by the use of rehgious weapons. It is not merely 
that the clergy have been for generations the most vigor- 
ous and uncompromising leaders of the PoHsh resistance. 
The Prussian state, as has been shown, is two-thirds 
Protestant; and the German Catholic believes that he 
must stand guard in defense of his religious rights. It 
is all too easy to convince the rank and file among the 
Poles that "Germanizing is Protestantizing," and that 
in defending his national cause he is doing the will of 
God. The Centre group in the Landtag has steadily 
opposed colonization and other moves to weaken the 
Polish influence in the East; nevertheless when racial 
interests seemed to demand it, the Polish electoral ma- 
chinery has been turned against the Centre, even when 
this meant a temporary alliance with the Social Demo- 



THE POLISH QUESTION" 261 

crats, as in Westphalia in 1907. When it comes to a 
conflict between church solidarity and racial interests, 
the German Pole never hesitates to choose the latter. 
Any priest who "wobbles" in support of the national 
cause is branded as a traitor to God or the servant of 
Mammon, and the German Catholics are occasionally 
described as "disguised Lutherans" or "Christian 
heathen." 

Racial solidarity has prevented the Social Democracy 
from making any great inroads among the Polish work- 
ingmen. There is, indeed, a Socialist party, loosely 
affihated with the Polish Socialists of Russia and Galicia, 
which unites in its program national and socialist ideals ; 
but the economic Utopia is second in importance to the 
realization of an independent Poland. There are like- 
wise conservative leaders among the Poles, adhering to 
the old "party of the nobles," who would seek to obtain 
from the Prussian government livable conditions for 
their people; and believing the resurrection of the an- 
cient state impossible, would try to perpetuate the 
Polish language and national consciousness and a truly 
Polish culture. These, however, are not the influential 
leaders of the present, who through a far-reaching net- 
work of clubs of political tendency dictate the policy of 
their people. For the most part these leaders seem 
to be affiliated with a National Democratic Party, the 
accredited representative of the international Polish 
league and a brother organization to similar parties in 
Austria and Russia. Their ultimate object is the winning 
of political independence for the Poles on a democratic 
basis ; their immediate aim, anything that can be done 
within the Prussian constitution for the attainment of 
this purpose. 

What do the Prussian Poles regard as political in- 
dependence? What do they believe to be politically 
obtainable? One may smile at the enthusiasm of the 
journalist or orator who yearns for "the day when the 



262 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

white eagle shall spread his wings again over an inde- 
pendent Polish empire, stretching from the Dnieper to 
the Oder and from the Black Sea to the Baltic!" but 
there is no doubt that the renaissance of the PoKsh state 
within Kmits which shall be no less than those before the 
first partition in 1772 is a guiding star for the great body 
of patriotic Poles, inspiring them to tremendous deeds 
of industry and sacrifice. For this the Pole works and 
saves, for this he organizes his young men and women, 
striving to make them in every point of culture the 
equal of the "oppressor." While since the turn of the 
century a radical spirit has grown among the Prussian 
Poles by leaps and bounds, no one has dreamed of an 
armed revolution within the immediate future. The 
leaders realized from the first the futility of any such 
thing in the face of the opposition of three powerful 
nations, and the German Pole, being better educated 
than his Russian fellow-patriot, has reahzed it better 
than he. To organize, to instil a hatred of Prussia 
into his children, to get possession of the land and crowd 
the Germans out of the towns, to defend his language 
with the greatest tenacity, — these are the things which 
he can do and which he has done so far as the Prussian 
law allows. But while generations of opposition have 
made the Pole a first-class fighter under cover and have 
heated national feeling to the boiling point, it must be 
confessed that there has been a great lack of definite 
propositions for self-government under Prussian rule. 
Those formulated in 1897 by one of the foremost of 
radical Polish journals, the Gazeta Grudzionska, are 
typical. After demanding equal rights for Polish with 
German as an ofl&cial language, the Polish paper goes 
on: 

"In the elementary schools our children must be first 
taught only Polish, and afterwards be trained as well 
as possible in the German language. In his official trans- 
actions the Pole must be permitted to use Polish both 



THE POLISH QUESTION 263 

in writing and in speech. In the Polish districts the 
officials must be born Poles or at least have a fluent 
command of the Polish language. All Polish sections 
— viz., Silesia, Posen, West Prussia, Masuria and Erm- 
land (in East Prussia) — must be united under the 
administration of a royal governor with their own 
Diet. . . . All special legislation against the Poles 
must be withdrawn, and all officials must be forbidden 
under the severest penalties to oppress or persecute the 
Polish nationality in any way." 

That the granting of such demands would be fraught 
with the gravest danger to Prussia and the German 
empire cannot be doubted. The ancient Polish state 
was not a national state, but a state in which a minority 
of Poles ruled over a majority of Russians, Lithuanians, 
Ruthenians, Germans and Jews. If we may trust the 
figures of the Prussian statistical bureau, of the two 
so-called Polish provinces, Posen is 39 per cent and West 
Prussia 65 per cent German at the present time. To 
give over these provinces to a Polish administration 
would be to hand over a large minority of Germans to 
be ruled by a small majority of Poles, and in this connec- 
tion German writers point to the fate of the Ruthenians 
of Galicia, whose linguistic and racial claims have been 
ignored by the PoKsh administration of the Austrian 
province. It would virtually mean that the German 
frontier would be moved to the west, making Berlin a 
frontier city and exposing the vitals of the empire, 
always without natural defenses to the east, to a Slavic 
blow. "I would rather sacrifice the Rhineland," said 
Bismarck in 1863, "than the Polish provinces;" and 
those who have followed the development of Germany 
in the train of Prussia's rise will understand why. Out 
of the East came Germany's unity; towards the East 
lies her greatest peril. If ever the deathblow to Ger- 
many's existence as a great power comes, it will not come 
along the Verdun road and down the valley of the Moselle 



264 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

nor through the harbors of the North Sea, but across the 
plains of the Vistula. 

This then is the Polish danger. Not because three to 
three and one-half milHon Poles in the eastern marches 
could ever threaten the security of twenty times as many 
Germans have the Prussian patriots regarded the Polish 
question as vital. But the Prussian Poles are only a 
small wing, — the best trained and educated, it is true, 
— only a part of a greater host, which Polish patriots 
put at eighteen millions, seven to eight millions of whom 
live in Russia, four millions in Austria and two and one- 
half milKons in America, ready to supply the sinews of 
war. The growth of a Polish national feeling is for 
the Germans dangerously allied with the Pan-Slavic 
movement. During the Russo-Japanese war the Polish 
press in Germany, while exulting in Russia's humilia- 
tion, gave expression to even more earnest yearnings for 
the fall of the " arch-enemy Prussia." There is no doubt 
that the growth of a "greater Slavic" feeling among 
Poles, Russians and Bohemian Czechs is fraught with 
danger to Germany's future. It is hard to see how the 
Germans could accord the Poles any considerable share 
of independence in the eastern provinces without running 
the risk of solidifying even further an enemy on the eastern 
marches who might some day hold open a door to an 
allied enemy. West Prussia and Posen are not Ireland 
or South Africa, but a necessary bulwark to Germany's 
greatness. In fact, the same reason exists for holding 
the provinces as inspired Frederick the Great for de- 
manding his share in the dismemberment of Poland : 
what does not remain German runs the risk of becoming 
Russian, or if not Russian, Pan-Slavic. 

Nor could the patriotic German think of surrendering 
the two milUon Germans who live in the basin of the 
Vistula, the upper Oder and the Memel to becoming 
Polonized. It has not for centuries been possible to draw 
a line separating German from Polish districts. The 



THE POLISH QUESTION 265 

two races live together as they have lived for seven 
hundred years, intricately tied up with each other in 
agricultural and business Hfe, with here a Polish village 
and there a predominatingly German parish. Enough 
has been said of the history of the provinces to show 
that here, as among the Magyars of Hungary and the 
Czechs of Bohemia, the Germans were the bearers of a 
higher culture and the schoolmasters of civilization. 
This brings with it an historical justification, if one 
may speak of historical justification in districts where 
historical conditions have undergone such a tremendous 
change. And if history is to be cited, it may be shown 
that the periods of conciliation, such as 1841-48 and 
1890-94, were followed by the most rapid growth in the 
PoKsh national spirit. 

It must be admitted, however, that here, as in Alsace- 
Lorraine, Prussia has shown herself no winner of peaceful 
victories over a subject people. The uncompromising 
spirit of Prussian bureaucracy aggravated a difficult 
situation not only among the Poles but among the 
Danes in Schleswig-Holstein and the Frenchified Ger- 
mans in Alsace and Lorraine, and on the eastern border 
as well as on the western and northwestern the irritation 
of a non-German people has been greater because coupled 
with a non-democratic system. The Poles with their 
rare national sense, their strong poHtico-religious or- 
ganization and their greater simplicity of Hfe have been 
able to more than hold their own thus far and will no 
doubt continue to do so, unless Prussia puts more money 
and more energy into the contest than heretofore. In 
the meantime the struggle has brought material ad- 
vantages to Germany's East through the rise in the value 
of land and the new capital and new economic energy 
which have been unlocked. It may be that this by- 
product of a lamentable racial struggle will itself work 
towards an adjustment. It has been seen how closely 
the PoUsh question is tied up with the question of rural 



266 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

labor and agricultural prosperity. Some day the East 
will undoubtedly attain a degree of prosperity which will 
cause economic and industrial questions to cross and 
complicate the national struggle. When through in- 
creased wealth the Poles shall have attained the same 
standard of hving as the Germans, the economic rivalry 
with the Germans must yield to some extent to the class 
struggle. It must be added, however, that none of the 
non- German Prussians will ever be content under Prus- 
sian rule until Prussia accords to all her citizens full 
rights of free citizenship. 



PART IV 
TRANSFORMATIONS AND TENDENCIES 



CHAPTER XIII 
The Rule of the Cities 

The Germans are the only civilized people who have 
won great power without the possession of a great city. 
This fact runs through the entire history of modern Ger- 
many and is of infinite importance for understanding 
German development in politics, in art, in social life 
and industry. In 1840 only Berlin and Hamburg had 
passed the one hundred thousand mark, and even thirty 
years later, when the great centripetal forces of railroad 
building and industrial growth had been making them- 
selves felt for more than a decade, only six more cities — 
Breslau, Cologne, Munich, Dresden, Konigsberg, Leipsic 
— had reached this figure. No more in the early seven- 
ties than to-day could one name the German capital 
city. Each had then as now its claims : Dresden, 
with its unique collections ; Munich, with its rich artistic 
and industrial life; Stuttgart, a complete though tiny 
metropolis amid its verdant hills; Frankfort on the 
Main, the financial capital ; Hamburg, the gateway to 
the world's trade. And none the less has each of the cities 
of Prussia a physiognomy so striking and a history and 
character so unique that no look at German culture 
would be complete without at least a glimpse at several 
of them : Cologne, the ancient, sacred queen of the 
Rhine ; Breslau, the point of the German wedge driven 
into Slavic lands; Konigsberg, the sentinel on the 
northeast, the nursery of Prussia's greatness. 

The whole history of German culture in the nineteenth 
century is, in fact, provincial history. The scientific 

269 



270 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

discoveries which have written the name of the Ger- 
man universities so high among those who have helped 
mankind came from Gottingen, Wiirzburg, Tiibingen 
and Heidelberg rather than from the greater metropolitan 
universities. Jena and Bonn have united with Berlin 
in supplying Germany with its philosophy; Gottingen 
and Leipsic led the way in philology, while German 
literature has clung to Weimar and Munich and out-of- 
the-way corners of Thuringia, Silesia and Schleswig- 
Holstein, so far as it has not been Viennese or Styrian 
or Swiss. To everything the Prussian-imperial capital 
Berlin has added its part, a noble and increasingly 
influential part, it is true, but a part no more indispen- 
sable than that of Munich and others. 

In fact, until well after the middle of the nineteenth 
century the great majority of Germans Hved in the 
country ; indeed, even as late as 1880 the Germans were 
less a city-dwelling folk than the Italians or the Turks. 
In the year of the war with France only 26 per cent of 
Germany's 41,000,000 lived in cities of more than five 
thousand inhabitants. But the movement cityward had 
already begun. Its cause was not a political one, al- 
though the political importance of BerKn and border 
cities like Metz and Strasburg and Aix-la-Chapelle 
added greatly to their growth. It began with the 
development of railroads and the improvement of 
water transportation, it went forward with increasing 
acceleration with the growth of German industry and 
it finally reached a point where only Great Britain, the 
Low Countries and the United States exceeded Germany 
in the percentage of city dwellers. Now nearly two- 
thirds of the inhabitants of the German empire Hve in 
cities of two thousand and over, more than half in 
cities of over five thousand ; in fact, practically the en- 
tire increase of population since 1880 has been in the 
cities, the population of the rural districts having not 
only relatively but also actually declined after that date. 



THE RULE OF THE CITIES 271 

Under the lash of an increasing industrial drive this 
growth has gone forward with stunning rapidity in the 
case of the largest cities, so rapidly, indeed, as to out- 
strip even the mushroom swelHng of the American 
cities of the Middle West. In the first decade of the 
twentieth century, no large American city except Los 
Angeles grew so fast as Diisseldorf ; of the ten great- 
est American cities only New York, Chicago, Cleve- 
land and Detroit increased as rapidly as the slowest 
growing German city in a similar group. In 1880 
Germany had fifteen cities of over one hundred thou- 
sand ; twenty years later the number had been doubled ; 
in 1 9 10 there were forty-eight cities of this class, includ- 
ing within their Hmits nearly one-fourth of the entire 
population of the Fatherland. 

"The pace of thought and action increases with the 
number of the cities." This remark of Gustav von 
Schmoller, one of the greatest of German economists, 
applies very strikingly to the changes which have taken 
place in the whole character of German culture. Around 
the institutions which the men of the provincial period 
founded within sight of hill and valley and forest there 
have grown up miles of brick and mortar. To-day by 
far the greater number of the books and periodicals 
are written and printed in cities ; twelve of the twenty- 
one universities are located in cities of over eighty thou- 
sand inhabitants; all of the technical universities, all 
of the higher veterinary institutions and six of the com- 
mercial universities are to be found there also. The 
whole tone of German society has been transformed by 
this tremendous change. 

There is, to be sure, no lack of centrifugal tendencies. 
In Saxony and Rhine- Westphalia, in Thuringia and Bava- 
ria and Lorraine, factories have been established away 
from the great centres of population or have developed in 
the small villages from home industries, and in many places 
in Middle and Southwest Germany one sees the gray or 



2 72 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

red stacks topping a thick cluster of trees or hears the 
whirr of machinery across some flower-strewn meadow. 
But it is the exception when industries, such as weaving 
in Silesia or the glass and slate works of Thuringia, 
can draw workmen from the cities and permit them 
to live in semi-rural quiet amid trickling waters and 
thick shading trees. More often the Westphalian vil- 
lage has grown to city size and has begun to present 
housing and sanitary problems no less urgent than those 
of the metropolis. Dr. Otto Most, the Diisseldorf ex- 
pert in city growth, states that in 191 2 one-third of all 
industrial production in Germany took place in cities 
of over one hundred thousand. More and more has 
industry drifted towards those sections where coal is 
most conveniently to be had : to Silesia, to Saxony, 
neighbor to the Bohemian collieries, and to Westphaha. 
More and more has the movement gone toward the 
West, where through the digging of canals and the 
improvement of the Rhine channel, cities like Diissel- 
dorf and Barmen have been made maritime, and even 
once inland trading centres, like Frankfort and Mann- 
heim, have by the construction of spacious harbors been 
brought into direct touch with salt water. 

Those who are familiar with the growth of American 
cities Uke Cleveland or Los Angeles know the problems 
which rapid growth thrusts upon a municipality: the 
la3iing out of streets, where the building lots are sold 
and the houses rented before the curb can be put in, 
the disposal of sewage so that it may not contaminate 
the homes of the future, the problem of water supply 
for the coming hordes who make a system inadequate 
before it can be completed, the fight against disease, 
corruption and crime. The German city builder has 
had all of these troubles and others peculiarly his own, 
which are even more difficult of solution. The mainte- 
nance of healthful living conditions is a terrific strain 
when the land on the city's periphery is not farming 



THE RULE OF THE CITIES 273 

land, but thickly strewn with villages, whose environs 
have great actual value as intensively cultivated gardens 
and rise in addition to such speculative figures as would 
necessarily cut off the city's growth outward but for 
active municipal interference. The problem of sani- 
tation becomes exceedingly acute when it is not merely a 
question of modern houses but of the creation of Hvable 
conditions in rookeries, whose walls, damp with humanity 
and cut off from sun and air, have stood since the early 
Renaissance. Yet such are the problems which the 
German cities have had to face in varying forms, from 
Berlin down to the newest mushrooms of industry like 
Bochum and Gelsenkirchen. 

It is in the solution of these problems, in the building 
and modernization of his cities, that the German has 
won his greatest administrative and technical triumphs. 
The same associative instinct and methodical spirit, 
the same energy and tenacity of will, the same inter- 
working of higher education and capital that put Ger- 
man industry to the fore have overcome the difficulties 
of city administration. "The German," says Friedrich 
Ratzel, "tends rather to focus his attention conscien- 
tiously on the duty in hand than to take a broad out- 
look on affairs." This statement, so thoroughly dis- 
proved by Germany's conquest of the world's trade, 
finds confirmation in the excellence of German city 
government. It is true that the democratic spirit is 
conspicuously absent in the control of city affairs and 
its absence is sometimes acutely felt, but this lack is 
counterbalanced by the absence of the feudal spirit, 
so manifest in national and state administration. The 
government of the present-day German city is a business 
enterprise, where, as in the mediaeval city, capital con- 
stantly maintains its control simply because it constantly 
meets the demands of labor more than halfway. 

The Germans look back on a long history of successful 
city administration. Mediaeval cities, like Augsburg, 



274 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

Strasburg, Mayence and Cologne, long before the day of 
Gutenberg or Luther had developed an administration 
which insured protection for their trade caravans with- 
out the walls and by an equitable adjustment between 
the merchants and the trade guilds — and of ten the em- 
ployed artisans — brought about peace and prosperity 
within. The Rhine League of cities, the Swabian 
League and the Hanseatic League had, before the coming 
of unhappy religious strife and foreign intervention in 
the Fatherland, given the first illustration of the real 
unity of Germans since the time of the Salic emperors. 
The Hansa especially stretched its hands over the trade 
of the entire north from Nijni Novgorod to Stockholm 
and London, and won deep respect for German municipal 
power from every trader north of Brittany. German 
political scientists insist that the government of mediaeval 
German cities had no influence upon that of the modern 
German city. They were small — these mediaeval mu- 
nicipaHties — from the modern standpoint, the largest of 
them, Cologne, containing perhaps not more than thirty 
thousand within its walls. It is certain, however, 
that the pride in civic beauty which wrought the beauti- 
ful fountains of Nuremberg and the handsome city halls 
and guild halls of Ratisbon, Strasburg and Leipsic 
has been perpetuated in the noble enthusiasm for the 
city's adornment which marks these municipalities in 
modern times. It is certain also that the spirit of 
compromise between interests and self-sacrifice for the 
city's welfare so characteristic of modern city admin- 
istration in Germany are a heritage from Renaissance 
days. 

The change of trade routes that came with the dis- 
covery of the western hemisphere and the lack of enter- 
prise of Hamburg and the other cities by the sea, which 
permitted the western nations of Europe to monop- 
olize the American and East Indian trade, gave the old 
German cities a staggering blow. The paternal des- 



THE RULE OF THE CITIES 275 

potism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries 
found civic independence but a hollow shell covering 
selfish class interest. In the West Napoleon's coming 
brought the French system of administration to the 
cities of the Rhine, but in the North and East all traces 
of a rational self-government had disappeared when in 
1808 Baron Stein, who unshackled the serfs and gave 
feudalism in Prussia its hardest blow, bestowed self- 
government on the Prussian cities. Since that time 
political progress in the Prussian cities has been as slow 
as constitutional progress in the Prussian state, practi- 
cally no advance having been made in the direction of 
democracy since the promulgation of the celebrated 
"City Ordinance" in 1853, though of minor changes of 
system there have been many. The other German states 
have in the main followed Prussia's lead. In the thirty 
municipal "Ordinances" now in effect for German cities, 
eight of them in Prussia, differentiation is made accord- 
ing to inherited provincial differences and size, but 
practically all agree in two particulars : a sharp restric- 
tion of the right to vote and a careful control over the 
city's acts by the state government. Under these 
safeguards all of the German states allow the city wide 
powers of legislation and administration. This essential 
difference between the German and the American city, 
which strikes the attention of every poHtical student, is 
of the greatest importance. Whereas the American city 
Hves within certain Hmits sharply prescribed by the 
legislature, the German city enjoys comparative free- 
dom to do what seems best for the communal welfare, 
so long as it fulfils the duties imposed on it by the 
national legislature and does not by its action contra- 
vene imperial or state laws. It may with some restric- 
tions acquire land by process of condemnation, may buy 
and administer every business from electric trolley to 
brewery or moving picture theatre, may build and rent 
any structure from dock to dwelling house, and mort- 



276 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

gage future generations by floating bonds to pay for its 
undertakings, — all without appeal to the national 
legislature, so long as the provincial or district authorities 
affix their seal of approval. 

One heritage of the past still cHngs to the German city. 
The possession of the right to city privileges does not 
automatically depend upon the inclusion of a certain 
number of people within its Hmits. The law does pro- 
vide in Prussia and other German states a minimum 
number of inhabitants which will justify a rural commune 
{Gemeinde) in being brought from under the direct con- 
trol of the Landrat, the lowest officer in the scale of 
governmentally appointed officials, and promoted to 
city privileges; but particularly in the industrial sec- 
tions of Prussia, where small villages have swelled to 
cities and cities to great cities in a few years, the govern- 
ment has shown great conservatism in granting city 
rights. On the other hand, it sometimes happens that 
in the eastern districts through emigration to the more 
industrial West, a city exists as a mere shell of municipal 
government from which the population has flown. Thus 
Lagow in the province of Brandenburg, with its 495 in- 
habitants, had in 1910 full city rights, while Hamborn 
in the Rhine province in the same year still administered 
one hundred thousand inhabitants as a rural community, 
and various lusty suburbs of Berlin whose population 
entitles them to almost metropoHtan rank have thus 
far been unable to obtain government approval of their 
promotion to city privileges. This conservatism is 
credited by Social Democrats and Radicals to the govern- 
ment's fear of freeing from the close control of the rural 
commune places which are largely composed of indus- 
trial workers. As a matter of fact there has been in 
Prussia an actual decrease in the number of cities in 
recent years through the swallowing up of smaller 
municipal existences into larger ones, a process which 
has gone on rapidly in the more thickly settled parts of 



THE RULE OF THE CITIES 277 

Germany. Thus Leipsic, which still kite-tails out into 
swarming independent villages along the chief roads, 
added between 1880 and 1910, 180,000 inhabitants by 
the annexing process, and Dresden and Cologne each 
115,000 by a similar extension of their corporate limits. 
There no longer exists the old difference of prerevolution- 
ary days, when the city, with market and walls, proudly 
wrote Stadtluft macht frei,^ over its gates, while the 
great majority of dwellers outside were serfs bound to 
the soil. Nevertheless, especially in Prussia, the privilege 
of city government with its freedom from the sharper 
control of the rural commune is eagerly sought by the 
larger communities. Thirty-eight communes, each with 
more than 20,000 inhabitants, were in 1910 still without 
such privileges in Prussia. 

Under the control of the state administration, then, the 
city rules itself through three organs, — a legislative or 
advisory council of citizens, an administrative board of 
legal or technical experts and an executive head, the 
burgomaster. The first is elected by the voters; the 
last two are chosen by the council. The first receives 
no pay, while the administrative board consists of paid 
and unpaid members and the burgomaster is always a 
paid official. An important modification of this system 
exists in the Rhineland, Hesse and Alsace-Lorraine. In 
these districts, where French administration set its 
centralizing impress during and after the Napoleonic 
era, the burgomaster forms the central administrative 
head, with whom a bureau of subordinated technical 
experts is associated. This three-part system, both in 
theory and workings, corresponds very closely to such 
conservative ideas of government as prevailed in Prussia 
at the time of the promulgation of the Prussian national 
constitution in 1850. Strangely enough, the influence of 
Prussia has been so great that even states Kke Wiirtem- 
berg and Bavaria, which work under more liberal con- 

^ "City air gives freedom." 



278 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

stitutions, have withstood any democratization of the 
cities. 

The lack of a democratic basis is chiefly noticeable 
in the council of citizens, which under various names 
{Stadtverordneten, BUrgervorskherkoUegium, Burgeraus- 
schuss, Burgerschaft, etc.) is chosen for periods varying 
from four to nine years. It numbers, according to 
the size of the municipality, anywhere from three in the 
smallest cities to 144 in Berlin. The right to vote and 
the method of voting for the city council is in most cases 
a modification of the usages in state elections. In 
Prussia the "three-class system" (cf. page 143) may with 
the permission of the government be modified to a shght 
extent, so that the smaller property holders may obtain 
somewhat larger representation than would fall to their 
share under a strict appHcation of the three-class system. 
The three classes under this modification divide the 
city assessment into y\ for the first, -^^ ^^^ ^^e second 
and 3% for the third. Other modifications with regard 
to the income tax have developed a highly complicated 
system for city elections, which, together with the prac- 
tice of viva voce voting, brings results not very different 
from those of the elections to the Landtag and insures an 
overwhelming control on the part of the propertied 
classes. Thus in Berlin in 191 2 one-third of the city 
fathers were elected by .2 per cent of the voters, one- 
third by 8.3 per cent and the remaining third by 91.5 
per cent. In Cologne in 19 13 the first class included 
I per cent, the second 9 per cent and the third 90 
per cent. The oft-quoted example of Essen shows what 
is really possible in city elections under the Prussian 
system. In this home of death-dealing ordnance, where 
the Krupp family owns the greater part of the real estate, 
so long as the late Alfred Krupp lived, four men out of 
nearly twenty thousand voters elected one-third of the 
city's representatives. With the passing of the last 
male of the Krupp family, a complete shift took place, 



THE RULE OF THE CITIES 279 

six hundred voters going up into the first class. In the 
state most given over to industry, Saxony, the cities are 
permitted to revise the electoral law for municipal use ; 
and Leipsic, which in 191 2 on the basis of universal 
suffrage sent only Social Democratic representatives to 
the Reichstag, introduced for municipal elections a 
"class system" as thoroughgoing as Prussia's, while 
other Saxon cities have graded the electorate according 
to profession and occupation. Even in the South Ger- 
man states, Wiirtemberg and Bavaria, where the suffrage 
is in other respects practically unrestricted, the right to 
vote in city elections depends on the acquisition of the 
local right of citizenship (Burgerrecht) with an attendant 
cost running sometimes as high as forty dollars. The 
result is to cut down the electorate even further than in 
Prussia. Thus in Bavaria in 1905 only slightly over six 
per cent of the municipal population had the right of 
suffrage in the local elections, and in 1907-08 in the city 
of Hanover, where a similar restriction prevailed, not 
quite four per cent, as against 18.7 per cent in BerHn in 
the same year. 

Property restrictions on the suffrage and viva voce 
voting with its attendant duress are not the only means 
employed to keep city administration out of the hands 
of the proletariat and smaller property owners. An- 
other is the provision existing in Prussia and Saxony 
that at least one-half of the members of the city council 
shall own real estate in the city. This quaHfication, the 
so-called Hausbesitzerprivileg, which more than anything 
else has tended to make the city a business organization, 
is the object of bitter attack on the part of the Socialists, 
who naturally count few real estate owners among their 
members. There seems no doubt that while it has worked 
benefits in the smaller cities, the provision has repeatedly 
balked measures of sociological progress in the larger 
places, like BerHn, where real property is coming more 
and more into the hands of a few men and syndicates. 



28o THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

Hedged in by these restrictions, it is plain that the Ger- 
man city must become to such an extent a business un- 
dertaking that politics can play but a small part in its 
government. Bearing in mind what has been said above 
regarding the economic basis of party division in Ger- 
many, it will be plain that the Conservative group, whose 
constituency is largely agrarian, has little or no in- 
fluence on city affairs, and that the atmosphere of the 
cities, particularly of the royal residences like Berlin, 
Dresden and Munich, is hostile to all feudal pretensions. 
It follows also that the National Liberals, as the large 
property owning class, are practically in control of the 
greater number of German cities. The only party which 
successfully disputes them is the Centre in the Catho- 
lic Rhineland and Westphaha, where Aix-la-Chapelle 
and Cologne are governed by Clerical majorities. The 
injection of party politics into city affairs, in spite of 
the view of the city as a business enterprise, has made 
the Rathaus in Berlin, Leipsic and many a South Ger- 
man city the scene of bitter strife. In defiance of all 
efforts to bar the proletariat from a voice in city affairs, 
there were in 1913 2753 Social Democrats sitting in the 
councils of the various German cities, largely in the 
smaller industrial centres, although the party counted 
in 191 1 one-third of the council members in Kiel, Mann- 
heim and Stuttgart and more than one-fourth in Berlin, 
Leipsic and Frankfort on the Main, It will be shown 
below that police administration falls largely out of the 
hands of the city government ; the administration of 
justice lies also beyond municipal control, and definite 
state regulations bind local authorities in local affairs and 
in the care of the poor. Thus limited, the influence of 
the Social Democrats, aside from tactical manoeuvres to 
introduce Socialists into city administrative offices, has 
been directed toward protecting the city's employees from 
exploitation, increasing administrative efficiency and ex- 
tending the field of municipal ownership. This exten- 



THE RULE OF THE CITIES 281 

sion of the communal activities is directly in line with the 
party's program and Socialist city councillors have led 
the advance in this direction with their advocacy of free 
municipal labor bureaus, the sale of fuel by the city at 
cost price, the introduction of free baths and free medi- 
cal and dental service into the schools and the adminis- 
tration of the theatres by the municipality. Not a few 
Social Democrats have been chosen to administrative 
posts, though naturally not in Prussia ; and on more 
than one occasion Socialist city councillors have come 
very near choosing a chief burgomaster of their faith, 
notably in Stuttgart in 191 1. 

It is the administrative board that forms the kernel 
of the German city government and more than anything 
else has made it a model of municipal efficiency. 
Whether bearing the name of Magistral, Stadtrat or 
Gemeinderat, whether consisting of several members 
with the burgomaster or chief burgomaster as primus inter 
pares, or of a burgomaster with a bureau of assistants 
(Beigeordneten), as in the west of Prussia and in Hesse 
(cf. page 277), it is a body of technically trained experts 
in city administration, which possesses equal powers 
with the citizen council in the initiation and approval of 
legislation and is intrusted with the carrying out of all 
laws and statutes. These administrators or syndics 
(Ratsherr is the most general designation) are in part 
paid employees of the city, in part citizens who serve with- 
out pay. Except in Schleswig-Holstein and Wlirtem- 
berg, where they are chosen by public vote, they are 
everywhere elected by the citizen council. The paternal 
policy of the German law permits the community to 
impress the services of a citizen for this and other un- 
salaried offices and to force him to perform the services 
for which he is chosen under penalty of fine or imprison- 
ment ; but this is almost never necessary for the reason 
that the opportunity to be of influence in the city, to 
wear the title of Stadtrat or Stadtverordneter and act as 



282 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

a functionary of government appeals strongly to the 
citizen of leisure. Particularly attractive are positions 
in the administrative board to men of public spirit and 
technical training on account of the great influence and 
honor in the community which they bring, and the ad- 
ministrators or syndics who perform for years onerous 
duties for the welfare of the city without pay are a 
most important wheel in Germany's efiicient municipal 
machine. 

The paid members of the city administrative board 
are, hke their honorary colleagues, elected by the citizen 
council. While the honorary members, however, like the 
council itself, are chosen for a period averaging six 
years, the paid administrators are elected for longer 
periods of from nine to twelve years and sometimes for 
Hfe. Their election must be confirmed by the state 
authorities, but once elected and confirmed, they are 
thoroughly independent of popular clamor and prej- 
udice. Their removal can be accompHshed only by 
legal process, a rare proceeding; and on retirement 
after a period of service they receive a pension which is 
little if any below their active salary. With the burgo- 
master, who, as we have seen, may be simple primus inter 
pares in the board or chief in charge of a bureau of sub- 
ordinates, they constitute a highly trained class of pro- 
fessional city administrators, including in their number 
a majority of university law graduates and also, in the 
larger places at least, civil and sanitary engineers, 
school experts, medical men and political economists. 
They need not be citizens of the community which calls 
them to administer its affairs, but like other professional 
men they sell their services to the place which makes 
them the most attractive offer. The larger cities are 
thus able to look over the field and select a man with the 
widest experience in a smaller place. The former chief 
burgomaster of BerHn, the late Dr. Martin Kirschner, 
who retired in 191 2, was called to the imperial capital 



THE RULE OF THE CITIES 283 

from Breslau ; his successor, Wermuth, had just resigned 
as assistant secretary of the imperial treasury. As a re- 
sult of the speciaKzation which has gone so far in munici- 
pal service, Diisseldorf established in 191 1 an Academy 
for Communal Administration, and Cologne in the follow- 
ing year a higher institution to train men for communal 
ofl5.ce. Both schools justified their right to existence 
by gaining a large attendance on the part of those who 
would qualify themselves for municipal work either as 
paid or unpaid officials. 

The administrative board then brings to the city 
government a technical training which in the larger 
cities is informed by a wealth of administrative ex- 
perience. As has been noted, the German system, 
having found a trained and satisfactory man, intrusts 
him with large powers of administration and puts him 
beyond the reach of those who elected him. The board 
has authority to approve or veto the acts of the city 
council and it puts these acts into operation. It works 
out the budget and prepares the plans for the city's 
manifold activities. Its work is further specialized and 
facilitated, especially in the larger cities, by the division 
of the municipal business into departments, each pre- 
sided over by a professional member of the board es- 
pecially trained for this field. 

With this departmental chief are associated other mem- 
bers of the administrative board, members of the citizen 
council and other citizens elected for this purpose by the 
council, the group presenting a combination of technical 
training, business judgment and local experience. Thus, 
the school committee in the larger cities may be com- 
posed of members of both organs of city government, 
together with representative teachers in the employ of the 
city and, in Prussia, the ranking evangelical clergyman, 
Roman Catholic priest and Jewish rabbi, all under the 
presidency of the Schulrat, who is a paid member of the ad- 
ministrative board and a trained school-man. Similarly 



284 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

the finance committee would be under the direction of 
a syndic or Kammerer, usually a law graduate; the 
building committee under an engineer; a graduated 
forester would direct the forest lands of the municipality 
as Forstrat, and so forth. The number of members of 
the administrative board is usually one-fourth or one- 
third of the council, the paid members varying from one 
in the smallest places to seventeen in Berlin. 

The combination of technical training and experience 
and business judgment which is found in the interworking 
of administrative board and council has shown itself 
singularly efficient in promoting the public welfare. 
Their interrelations have been compared by pohtical 
writers to those of ministry and legislature in the state. 
To complete the analogy, those cities which have the 
bureau system of burgomaster and subordinates are like 
the empire, with its chancellor and ministers responsible 
to him. Or, since the German city is a business under- 
taking, one may speak of the stockholders and directors. 
It must never be forgotten, however, that because of 
their long tenure of office, the members of the board are 
independent of the council. Acute differences of opinion 
between the two are referred to the arbitrament of the 
state authorities. 

This leads to another very important function of the 
administrative board. It is not merely an organ of city 
government, but a servant of the state and empire as 
well. Upon it falls the duty of enforcing all imperial 
and state laws not intrusted to special public officials. 
It is an important link in the military system ; it is in- 
trusted with the administration of the national insur- 
ance laws; it must establish and maintain commercial 
courts ; in certain states, Prussia among them, it appoints 
the local evangelical clergy ; in short it has thrust upon 
it the enforcement of a multitude of statutes passed by 
Reichstag and Landtag. By these functions, which are 
constantly increasing, it interlocks the imperial and 



THE RULE OF THE CITIES 285 

state admimstration with the organs of local municipal 
government. 

"The city is not outside of the state, but a part of 
it." This theorem of German administration explains 
the close oversight which the state government exercises 
over the acts of the city authorities. Without this con- 
trol on the part of the government officials one could not 
explain the wide powers of legislation and administration 
which the cities of Prussia, Hesse and Saxony enjoy. All 
of the German states, including Alsace-Lorraine, re- 
serve to the state officials the right to refuse approval 
to any of the more important acts of the city authorities. 
These may be ordinances not in accord with state 
policy, the incurrence of debts greater than the com- 
munity should bear, the purchase of property by the 
city and naturally also the extension of the communal 
limits. In addition to the direct control which comes 
through the approval or non-approval of acts of the 
city government concerning these matters, the state 
officials exercise an indirect control through the right 
of confirmation or rejection of all paid members of the 
administrative board, including the burgomaster, a right 
that is exercised by every German state except Baden. 

The organs through which the state wields this power 
over the cities vary in name and somewhat in function 
in the various kingdoms and principalities which make up 
the empire. In them all, however, direct authority is in 
the hands of the government official who heads the 
district within which the city Kes. In Prussia cities 
of twenty-five thousand and over fall under the control 
of the Regierungsprdsident, a government functionary 
who heads the administration of the surrounding " dis- 
trict" (Bezirk) and reports to the provincial authorities; 
in the smaller states the control of the central power 
radiates to the city somewhat more directly. Berlin 
is immediately under a president appointed by the 
minister of the interior. It need hardly be said that 



286 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

from a business standpoint the city rarely finds this 
control burdensome, the efforts of the central authorities 
being mainly directed towards keeping municipal under- 
takings within the limits of solvency ; but when it comes 
to a matter involving poHtical or social questions, the 
government hand is immediately felt in restraint of any- 
thing that smacks of radical poHcy. In view of what has 
been said, however, about the restrictions to the elec- 
torate, it is evident that the crown ofl&cials do not often 
have to interfere : when feudal questions are eliminated, 
as they are in city government, government poHcy 
rarely runs counter to the wishes of the propertied classes, 
which control the cities. Here and there personal ques- 
tions have arisen, especially in Prussia, where an official 
whose record smacks of advanced hberahsm may come 
under the ban. Thus in Berlin, where municipal wishes 
often collide with crown interests and where there is 
always a more or less patent feeling of irritation in the 
city hall against the peremptory tone of the crown offi- 
cials, the Emperor refused in 1898 to confirm the chief 
burgomaster. The council promptly reelected the same 
man and the Prussian officials as promptly refused to 
resubmit his name for royal approval. City and state 
stood with locked horns until the council finally gave in 
and chose another candidate. Dr. Kirschner, whose 
choice was confirmed after a yeaf's delay. It may be 
added that the city has the right of appeal to the courts 
in cases where the line defining the state's power of 
interference is not clearly drawn, and that this right 
is occasionally exercised, especially with regard to the 
police. 

It is with regard to the poUce power that the centraUz- 
ing system has gone farthest, and in this regard Prussia 
again leads. It is not strange that in the matter of 
police administration the paternal despotism of the 
eighteenth century has projected itself most forcibly into 
the twentieth, not strange in view of the love of order 



THE RULE OF THE CITIES 287 

and the gift for discipline inherent in German character 
that the police should play a commanding role in com- 
munal and even in private Hfe. Nor is it to be won- 
dered at, when we remember the military training to 
which all Germans are subjected, that this semi-miHtary 
arm of the government should bring to the streets and 
squares of the cities the atmosphere of barracks and 
parade ground. The policeman is everywhere in Ger- 
many and exercises an immediate control over the citi- 
zen in every phase of communal Hfe. He is not merely 
a "guardian of the peace"; but construing his duty 
to protect the pubhc safety and order in the widest 
possible manner, he is the aggressive enforcer of the laws 
and also of the numerous and intricate regulations of 
the police department, which have the force of law. 
Ride your bicycle on the left-hand side of the street in 
Leipsic, and the poHceman will arrest you, note your 
name and address, collect the one mark fine and receipt 
for it, touch his helmet and send you about your busi- 
ness, all in five minutes. As street police, harbor police, 
fire pohce, sanitary police, political police, police in charge 
of tenements, of water courses, of forests, of fields, of 
hunting, of fishing, of morals, these ministers of the law 
surround the German citizen literally from the cradle 
to the grave and beyond, and see that he minds the 
thousands of restrictions and "Verbotens'^ which deco- 
rate every wall and fence and public building and give 
thunderous testimony to the German sense for disci- 
pline. 

It is not merely in enforcing obedience to laws and 
regulations that the police play a role in the life of the 
individual German. The police department keeps the 
personal and vital records, which even in the most 
rapidly swelling cities of the West are models of accuracy 
and completeness. With the birth of every young citi- 
zen of the Fatherland, the police affix a metaphorical 
tag to him, which he is never permitted to lay aside so 



288 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

long as he remains in Germany. The police register 
keeps careful note of his residence ; it notes his mihtary 
service, his marriage, the birth or death of his children. 
The police follow his comings and goings at hotels, they 
ferret out his income for the tax collector, they look up 
his baptismal record in order to secure his church tax, 
they oversee his household arrangements from the 
hiring of the maid to the hours when the garbage is put 
out for collection and the garbage can taken in, they see 
that he has his stoop swept, they fix the hours for locking 
his front door at night and for unlocking it in the morn- 
ing, they say when he may play the piano and when he 
must rest from his playing, they fix the temperature of 
his water in the public bath house, and should cremation 
be his latter end, they must, in Prussia at least, minutely 
inspect and fill out a report on his corpse before burning. 
For everything there are blanks and formulas in be- 
wildering number, and every error is tagged with its fine. 
Few indeed are the Germans or the foreigners in Germany 
who do not sometime or other come into conflict with 
this paternal guardianship. 

The rules governing poHce administration differ widely 
in various parts of Germany. As might be expected, 
Prussia goes farthest in state control, while Wiirtemberg 
allows the greatest freedom to the individual community. 
As a general thing in the larger cities, — those of over one 
hundred thousand in Prussia, — and in the state capitals, 
the Residenzen, the police are entirely and directly imder 
the control of special heads appointed by the ministry. 
Even where municipal control is permitted, it operates 
through the burgomaster, who is in a sense a crown ofl&cial. 
According to the Saxon law, authority over the police 
may be temporarily withdrawn from the city govern- 
ment when the public welfare seems to demand it. This 
dependence on the crown tends of course to fill the police 
officers, from the Berlin Police President down to the most 
unimportant police clerk in Crefeld or Strasburg, with 



THE RULE OF THE CITIES 289 

a sense of independence of the local authorities and to 
make the police force in a way an army of occupation, 
ready at any moment to enforce the will of the central 
authorities in despite of local feeling. This semi-mUitary 
position is further strengthened by the rigid rules en- 
forced by the state authorities governing promotions, 
pensions, etc., which even in the smaller cities of Prussia 
and Hesse and in states with liberal traditions like 
Baden and Alsace-Lorraine bind the hands of the 
municipal authorities and tend to make the police quite 
independent of the city. The city must provide a cer- 
tain part of the money for pay and pension, — even all 
of it, in some cases, — but the state everywhere makes 
the rules which govern the police force. 

This state control of the forces of law and order is 
not confined to Germany of course ; in France and in 
America the influence of the local authorities on police 
control is also restricted in many ways. In Germany, and 
especially in Prussia, the government has assured itself 
in every possible manner against local interference. 
That the system has its advantages, no one may deny. 
The development of the military virtues of loyalty and 
impartiality in the fulfilment of duty are among them ; 
and especially in the industrial districts, where strikes 
and their attendant violence call for poHce interference, 
the mobility of the German police and the discipline of 
its individual members insure to the fast-multiplying 
hordes of Germany's mine and factory population an 
order and peace which may be found nowhere else under 
similar conditions. The striking coal miners on the Ruhr 
or the trolley-men around the Hallesche Tor in Berlin 
know full well that they have facing them a well-disci- 
plined body, whose sabres and, if need be, pistols will 
enforce the law without any fear of the political conse- 
quences which so often lames the arm of the authorities 
in France and America. A considerable part of the 
police force and a large majority of their officers have 



290 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

served as subordinate of&cers in the army, and not in- 
frequently higher police officials are called from the active 
service. 

On the other hand, when the independence of local 
control is carried as far as it is in Germany, it develops 
in both police and public a feeling of dependence on the 
police power which robs the citizen as well as the com- 
munity of sturdy self-reKance. Official arrogance is an 
outgrowth of the Gertnan bureaucratic system which is 
borne with increasing impatience by the advancing in- 
dustrial democracy. Pride in the service of his state is 
an attractive side of the German character, its reverse 
is the feeling of caste which the possession of public 
office infuses into the breast of even the humblest postal 
or customs clerk. Several years ago the national con- 
vention of railway employees at Dresden greeted with 
pathetic joy the permission granted by various govern- 
ments to wear shoulder-straps on the service uniform 
and promised a more loyal service in return for this 
distinction. It is not to be expected that the German 
bureaucrat will regard himself as a "servant of the 
people" ; as a servant of the state the lower official too 
often regards himself as the master of the people. Among 
the petty office-holders the putting on of a uniform means 
too often the assumption of an arrogant attitude toward 
the civiKan, the transformation of a genial citizen into a 
petty tyrant. The risk is of course greater when this is 
a police uniform. As a rule the German policeman, even 
in Prussia, is the soul of helpfulness, a godsend to the 
perplexed traveller or troubled citizen ; but in the ful- 
filment of his duties he is apt to show an arrogance which 
in trying situations, as in the control of traffic in the con- 
gested Berlin streets or on the occasion of a strike, often 
degenerates into barracks-yard violence, when the public 
becomes the recruit and the policeman the drill officer. 

The policeman knows that his word is law and that 
the chances of the individual citizen obtaining a hearing 



THE RULE OF THE CITIES 291 

against him are exceedingly small. In 191 2 during a 
trolley-men's strike in Berlin, several foreign newspaper 
correspondents who accidentally came into a forbidden 
zone were ruthlessly sabred by the poKce under orders 
of an excited officer before their taxicab could be got 
into motion to take them to safety. Appeal to the higher 
authorities simply brought the customary reply that the 
policemen were doing their duty. The German police- 
man is, as a rule, armed with a pistol in addition to his 
sabre. Several years ago the PoKce President of Berlin 
promulgated an order requiring under penalty that the 
poHce when attacked should shoot to kill. The imme- 
diate result was, as might have been expected, a series 
of fatal accidents to bystanders. In the view of the 
BerHn press the order was not justified by the prevalence 
of crime in this most orderly great city on earth, nor did 
it do credit to BerKn's position in the civiHzed world. 
Under the circumstances, however, it is a credit to the 
peacefulness and kindness of the German character that 
cases of police brutality are rare and usually occur 
only in moments of the greatest excitement. 

Another feature of the system of state control in the 
larger cities is the constant extension of the powers of 
the police. Theoretically the police are to care for public 
order and safety; but it is easy, of course, to expand 
these ideas so that they include every field of public 
utility and service. Under the police interpretation of 
their powers, they may close any assembly where opinions 
contrary to public order are being uttered, and the 
extent to which this right of control goes may be illus- 
trated by the fact that a policeman is often to be 
found occupying a prominent seat at the meetings of 
university clubs for the study of social and economic 
questions, his presence insuring that the discussion 
will be scientific and not political. The poKce control, 
of course, taverns, hotels and theatres, and all relating 
to them. Naturally it is in the larger cities of Prussia 



292 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

and, after it, Saxony where police rule is most mani- 
fest. They may object to the appointment of any in- 
dividual as manager of a theater, and they censor his 
offerings to the pubhc. The individual or the munici- 
pality may appeal to the courts as to the right of the 
police to legislate in the premises or as to the reasonable- 
ness of the regulations, but this is naturally a costly 
proceeding for individual citizens. In BerHn, where 
the police regulations imder the vigorous PoHce Presi- 
dent von Jagow have frequently run counter to munic- 
ipal feeling, a police order requiring that ladies remove 
their hats in the boxes at the theatres was tested in the 
courts in 191 2, and in spite of the claim of the police that 
the wearing of hats might on occasion lead to excitement 
and disorder, the court revoked the regulation. There 
are many Germans, not all Social Democrats and Radi- 
cals, who feel strongly the irksomeness of a system which 
in so many ways substitutes police rule for local self- 
government ; but as a general thing the system is borne 
because of its efficiency. Especially through the register 
of the inhabitants which the police keep with such 
efficiency in the cities, is the convenience of municipal 
administration aided. It need hardly be remarked that 
there is no phase of German Hfe to which the American 
or EngHshman finds it harder to do justice than the 
system of poUce government, less because it collides with 
his theories of local self-government than because of 
the watchful patemaHsm of which it is one expression. 
Being assured of the solvency and order of the city, 
it is the policy of the German states to give to the in- 
dividual communities complete freedom for the promo- 
tion of the health and prosperity of their citizens. This 
freedom goes farthest in Prussia, Hesse and Baden, but 
in all the states of the empire the city is free within 
the laws of the state to attain these objects in its own 
way. It has, to be sure, constantly increasing duties 
assigned to it by the state and empire as their agent in 



THE RULE OF THE CITIES 293 

the administration of the military laws, the collection of 
statistics, the erection of commerce courts and the mainte- 
nance of these and the minor courts of civil and criminal 
procedure, the collection of taxes and the administration 
of the imperial insurance laws. All of these things the 
city and rural commune do as the agent of government. 
In the maintenance of highways, schools and hospitals 
and the care of the poor the community acts for itself 
within the limits prescribed by state law. For dis- 
bursements on these latter accounts the city raises 
money by taxation, but not infrequently the state inter- 
feres here too, removing from the control of the city 
important sources of revenue. Thus in 1902 practically 
the whole of the octroi, a tax collected by the cities at 
their gates on certain food-stuffs, was voted away from 
the.municipaHties by the Reichstag, and in 1909 the cities' 
revenue from taxes on beer was practically cut off. 
Occasionally new sources of revenue are opened to them, 
as in 191 1, when the cities were permitted to take 40 
per cent of the newly imposed tax on the unearned incre- 
ment in land values. 



CHAPTER XrV 

The City as a Business and Social Agent 

The German city is then a joint stock company. 
This company has at its command a technically trained 
board of directors in the salaried administrators, and dis- 
poses as well of the voluntary services of a number of 
stockholders as adjuncts to the administration and in 
the council. Under these circumstances the city shows 
itself eminently well organized to solve the complicated 
problems thrust upon it. In caring for the physical 
and social welfare of the hundreds of thousands who have 
been added each year to the urban population, these 
corporations have always been ready to experiment out- 
side of accepted economic theories and to go ahead with 
undertakings for the common good with the same com- 
bination of hard business sense and romantic idealism 
which marked the growth of Germany's big business. 
These characteristics have shown themselves in many 
sides of communal hfe. Two of these are especially 
worth considering : municipal ownership of public 
utilities and the attempts to solve the housing problem. 

Communal ownership and administration of industrial 
and commercial undertakings is essentially a product of 
the past half-century. The German cities of the era 
of the Reformation and Renaissance had gone far in the 
direction of municipal ownership and trading, it is true, 
not only in the purchase of large tracts of forest and 
arable land, but also in the sale of grain, wine and beer, 
and in the conduct of bakeries, bath-houses and similar 
enterprises. The decay of the cities in the seventeenth 
and eighteenth centuries brought an end to these enter- 

294 



THE CITY AS A BUSINESS AND SOCIAL AGENT 295 

prises, and the liberalism of the nineteenth century, with 
its narrow views of the functions of government, caused 
most of the cities to sell their communal holdings. With 
the rise of manufacturing, however, and the growth of 
the cities, the spirit of communal ownership and trading 
took possession of the municipaKties long before the 
state had abandoned the idea that the duty of the com- 
munity toward business lay simply in the removal of 
obstacles to private competition. The first instances of 
municipal ownership came, characteristically enough, 
through the exercise of the poHce power. To insure pub- 
lic safety BerKn and other cities early acquired gas works 
and water works, and to these were gradually added 
slaughter houses and public baths, both institutions 
essential to public health. 

Once fairly started on the road of communal owner- 
ship, the cities sped forward to the erection of market 
houses and docks and the operation of loading cranes, 
electric plants and public conveyances, before the German 
states had fully made up their minds to the public 
ownership of railroads. Since that time nothing has 
been more characteristic of communal Hfe in Germany 
than the expansion of the city's field of industry and 
commerce. To be sure, there is as yet no generally 
accepted theory as to what properly constitutes an 
object of public or municipal control, except that it 
must be something in the proper and regular conduct 
of which the public is vitally interested and something 
which brings no very great risk for capital. Under the 
drive of the rapidly increasing population the German 
has, however, included in his municipal enterprises 
undertakings where city control is in no sense neces- 
sary for the public health and welfare, but where the 
winning of a profit for the community is the chief ex- 
cuse for communal ownership. Such are trolley lines, 
brick works, — started to utilize the clay on municipal 
property, — breweries, hotels and race tracks. Such 



296 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWG WARS 

enterprises as these do not property constitute mo- 
nopolies, and in Prussia and other states the city must 
pay taxes on property thus administered, since it here 
competes with private enterprise. The entry of the 
city into the field of private business has not been with- 
out opposition, and such undertakings as those last men- 
tioned are sporadic rather than general, even in the 
larger communities; but it must be said that the op- 
position has come from the lack of capital on the part 
of the city or doubt as to the financial returns rather 
than from any hesitation about competing with 
private business. Indeed that the community is en- 
titled to enter the field of industry and commerce for 
profit seems to be fairly well conceded in Germany. 
At the time of the urban census of 1908, 94 per cent 
of the waterworks, 64 per cent of the gas works and 41 
per cent of the electrical works in German cities were the 
property of the municipality. In 1913 only about 50 
of the slaughter-houses in the entire empire were in 
private hands. In spite of the unfortunate financial 
results from the operation of trolleys by the community, 
municipal ownership has made progress here too, so 
that the number of municipal undertakings was in 
191 1 nearly equal to the private electric car companies. 
Next in importance are municipal taverns and brewer- 
ies ; after them comes a list embracing the widest range 
of business activity. Of great interest in this regard 
is the so-called Zweckverband, an association of several 
cities for common ownership and administration of 
some public utility. This form of municipal coopera- 
tion, which enables several neighboring communities 
to make joint use of water, gas or electricity, or even to 
run trolleys jointly, has grown rapidly in the more 
thickly settled districts and has been warmly encouraged 
by the various state governments. In 1911 the Prus- 
sian government regulated the legal side of these coopera- 
tive alliances by a special statute. 



THE CITY AS A BUSINESS AND SOCIAL AGENT 297 

These enterprises employ of course a great number of 
workers, and in addition to the regular activities of the 
city bring the payrolls of such municipalities as Cologne 
or Frankfort up to figures that surpass the entire turn- 
over of not a few of the smaller states. That the city's 
business is done with so httle that savors of corruption 
or the misuse of public confidence is due in the first 
instance to the conscientiousness with which the Ger- 
mans look after the control of all of their organizations, 
chiefly, however, to the fact that the city is a corpora- 
tion in which the propertied interests have control. 

The entrance into the field of profit-winning business is 
only one of the ways in which the strong social conscious- 
ness of later years has manifested itself in the German city. 
Here and there in times of stress the municipahty inter- 
feres and fixes the price of food-stuffs, especially the 
price of meat, which, as we have seen, became under 
the agrarian tariff such a serious question. In Stutt- 
gart the custom has prevailed of fixing meat prices 
monthly in advance by joint conference between the 
representatives of the city and the butchers' associa- 
tion. In 191 2 when a great dearth of meat forced the 
imperial government to suspend the tariff and admit 
foreign meat under certain conditions, over two hundred 
cities imported meat from abroad and sold it either 
through the butchers or directly over the counter to 
the consumer, and several regularly embarked on the 
raising of cattle and swine for sale. Numberless smaller 
undertakings, such as the conduct of a regular milk 
business by Mannheim and the raising of vegetables by 
the municipality of Barmen, show how Httle German 
cities regard the line which is supposed to separate 
communal from private enterprise, when it is a ques- 
tion of protecting their citizens from exploitation. 

It is evident then that the fact that the German city 
is a business corporation controlled by the propertied 
classes has in no wise prevented the fulfilment of its 



298 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

mission as a social organism with a heart for the un- 
protected poor. In the care of the poor and the defec- 
tive classes generally most German cities have gone 
much farther than the requirements of the state laws, 
and some, like Elberfeld and Strasburg, have worked 
out systems which are models of the cooperation of 
technically trained administrative officers with a large 
body of volunteer workers among the citizens. Numer- 
ous indeed are the ways in which especially the larger 
cities have sought to bring communal aid to those en- 
gaged in the struggle for existence. Municipal pawn- 
shops go back to the early Renaissance, — there is one 
in Augsburg with a consecutive history since 1591. 
Municipal savings banks are to be found in nearly every 
town of considerable size. In several places, not- 
ably Dresden and Diisseldorf, city-owned banks have 
met with great success as building-and-loan agencies 
by accepting second mortgages on real estate and thus 
bringing much help to home builders in the chronic 
dearth of capital in Germany. Municipal labor in- 
telligence offices, which began with the first rush of 
labor to the cities in the early eighties, have grown to a 
point where they practically own the field. Strongly 
opposed at first by the Social Democratic labor unions, 
these offices have shown a growing tendency toward 
a joint control by the city authorities and the repre- 
sentatives of trade unions; and have expanded to in- 
clude intelligence offices of dwellings for workingmen, 
writing and rest rooms for the unemployed, and so 
forth. With a wide-spun affiliation of city with city 
and city with rural village, with a central clearing 
office in the state capital, like that at Munich for Bavaria, 
they make up a compact and well-drilled organization 
for promoting the mobility of labor and fighting the 
evil of unemployraent endemic in all industrial states. 
Through the interlocking of this system a workman 
can answer a call to employment in a distant district 



THE CITY AS A BUSINESS AND SOCIAL AGENT 299 

with no more loss of time than is incident to steam or 
electric transportation. By effective intermunicipal 
and interstate associations, for which there is a national 
headquarters with the inevitable pubKcation in Berlin, 
the Germans have made rapid progress towards the 
ideal of the industrial state, — "no position unfilled, 
no worker unemployed." 

A further step in the same direction has been 
far less successful, — municipal out-of-work insurance. 
This complicated subject, before which even the im- 
perial statisticians have confessed themselves at a loss, 
has caused much perplexity in Germany as well as in 
England. Leipsic and Cologne tried their hands at it 
in the first decade of the century with indifferent success. 
Several South German cities, less antipathetic than the 
Prussian and Saxon municipaHties to the Social Democ- 
racy, have tried the experiment of subsidizing the trade- 
unions, thus supplementing the out-of-work allowances of 
these organizations, but the complications in classifica- 
tion and strike situations are difficult, and there has been 
shown a general tendency to wait until a basis for imperial 
insurance can be found, paired with a government that 
will be willing to add this further burden to industry. 

No such arguments, however, could be brought against 
distress work, which the German cities have undertaken 
with readiness and with a really lavish hand. In such 
industrial crises as 1891-95, 1900-03 and notably in 
the winters of 1907 and 1909 many of the larger cities 
employed thousands of men, not merely with the time- 
honored device of snow removal, but in building. In the 
winter of 1908-09 Diisseldorf incurred a deficit of fifty 
thousand dollars, disbursed on unprofitable pubHc works 
to more than two thousand hunger-pinched members 
of the proletariat. 

Uncounted indeed are the ways in which the munici- 
palities have gone forward to meet the growing and 
even nascent demands of the economically weak in 



300 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

the industrial centres. In 1906 there were scarcely 
twenty public bureaus furnishing free legal advice. 
Five years later this number had increased more than 
fivefold, besides the great increase in the bureaus main- 
tained for this purpose by private benevolence, all 
supplementing the work of poHtical and fraternal 
organizations. The Hmit in this direction of communal 
assistance of a paternal sort has probably been reached 
at Halle, where the head of the city statistical bureau 
advertises "free consultation to parents" (Elternstunden) 
on the choice of a hfe work for their young hopefuls. 

The most serious problem which has confronted the 
German cities, not merely in connection with the work- 
ing classes but with the lower middle classes as well, 
is the housing problem. The question of adequate 
dwellings for the multiplying millions is so fraught with 
important consequences to the Fatherland that it has 
engaged the earnest attention of economists and sociolo- 
gists as well as of social workers of every description. 
Germany is not a large country, and land is a coveted 
possession at best: it can easily be seen how great 
the competition for it is and how rapid the rise of land 
values where in the larger cities from Berlin to Munich 
and Strasburg the jostling throngs of newcomers de- 
mand shelter and the speculators step in to send the 
price shooting farther skyward. Where in the fall 
gardeners worked in potato fields and onion beds, there 
rise in the spring street after street of barracks-like 
buildings, each five or six stories high, each as much 
like his fellow as one biscuit box is like another and 
each packed from attic to cellar with tiny dwellings for 
workingmen. The transformation would suggest the 
growth of American cities, save that in the newer parts 
of even the Bronx and South Chicago there is an abun- 
dance of land and a lack of the crowding which in the 
newer parts of South Berlin or the Rhine-Westphalian 
cities makes such a sad impression. It was stated by 



THE CITY AS A BUSINESS AND SOCIAL AGENT 301 

Professor Rudolph Eberstadt of Berlin at the Evangelical- 
Social Congress in 191 2 that land in the tenement dis- 
trict of Berhn is eight times as expensive as land simi- 
larly situated in London, and iii other large German cities 
five times as expensive. 

The price of new land is not the only problem which 
dwelling reformers have had to face. Few cities are, 
like Elberf eld-Barmen, the creation of the industrial 
present. Most of them look back to a hoary past, 
which has left to the city an inner core of old houses, 
some of them picturesque, most of them rookeries with 
insufficient Hght and air, soaked with the mould of in- 
sanitary centuries and falHng to pieces with decay. In 
these the poorest families are crowded in ever-thickening 
numbers as the outside lands are built up. In these con- 
ditions, in spite of all the efforts of the city fathers, many 
Germans live in veritably Chinese surroundings. Pro- 
fessor SchmoUer at a congress in 191 2 was authority 
for the statement that six hundred thousand of the in- 
habitants of Greater BerHn are packed together in 
dwellings where from five to thirteen persons have during 
the entire North German winter access to no other 
heated room than the kitchen. In investigations con- 
ducted during the first decade of the century the sick 
relief bureau of the Berlin Merchants' Association 
found six thousand sick persons who were obliged to 
share sleeping rooms with more than five persons. The 
bringing up of children under such circumstances is 
of course a veritable slaughter of the innocents, and it is 
to this cause that the comparatively high rate of infant 
mortality in Germany is mainly ascribed. The National 
Association for Housing Reform (Verein fiir Wohnungs- 
reform) has for years been calling for some imperial or 
state legislation, realizing that the efforts of the cities 
to meet the evil must be inadequate. In the meantime 
the cities have gone forward on the road of reform with 
all the energy that lies in their administration. 



302 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

The first step was naturally the purchase of land. 
With the forehandedness which is possible under their 
administrative system, many cities entered early on a 
program of land purchase with a double object, — in 
order to hold off the speculator and put the land on the 
market later at fair prices and in order that the com- 
munity might share in the increment that comes with 
the community's growth. It has been estimated that 
twenty-five million dollars annually would not more 
than cover the total of such expenditure by cities of more 
than fifty thousand inhabitants since the beginning of the 
new century, the city investments amounting to about 
one-third of all real estate purchases in places of this 
size. The process has gone so far that in certain cities 
a considerable percentage of the entire administrative 
area is the property of the municipality. 

Thus in 1910 in Frankfort and Augsburg one-half of 
the land belonged to the city; in other places, hke 
Strasburg, Breslau, Cologne, Halle and Karlsruhe, 
one-fourth ; while Ulm, which early created a special 
fund for land purchase, claimed to own three-fifths of 
all the land available for building purposes within the 
corporate limits. Purchases are of course not Hmited 
to land within the city but extend to the acquisition of 
forests and fields far out on the periphery. In order 
to arrive before the speculator it is evident that the city 
authorities have to lay their plans a long way in advance, 
as most of the German states sharply limit the right of 
condemnation to actual street-laying and sanitation, 
while the effort to bring reserve lands on the market 
through an increase of taxes to a point where it is un- 
profitable for the owner to hold them — a much-tried 
expedient in German cities — has done little to affect 
land values. 

The first result of this land control is that the German 
cities have been able to supply the newer sections with 
public institutions, such as hospitals, parks and public 



THE CITY AS A BUSINESS AND SOCIAL AGENT 303 

baths, in a manner which would be impossible under the 
policy of buying only as need dictates. The beautiful 
green spots, from the larger parks to the mimite Anlagen, 
which form so attractive a feature of the periphery of 
cities like Frankfort, Diisseldorf and Munich, are a 
striking testimonial to the beneficial results of municipal 
foresight. Furthermore, the city has been in a position 
to put land for dwellings on the market at fair prices, 
disposing of it either under long leases or permanently 
under building restrictions which insure its being used 
for decent dwellings. A great deal of land has thus 
been sold with a string to it, insuring to the city the 
right of repurchase in case the purpose of the city's 
entrance into the market — the procuring of decent 
houses for its poorer classes at reasonable rates — • 
is defeated. A few cities, about fifteen, have entered 
rather hesitatingly upon the building of small dwellings, 
Essen, a creation of modern industry, having led the 
way with the building of a considerable number of one- 
family houses ; but municipal home building has as 
yet gone only far enough to show the direction which 
social policy is taking and the length to which the 
German cities are prepared to go in solving this knotty 
problem of growth. 

That the safeguarding of the German family depends 
on turning away from the barracks-tenement with its 
tightly packed layers of humanity to the dwelling of 
not more than four families is clearly recognized by 
students of metropolitan life in Germany, and many 
and interesting experiments are being made in this 
field. Two or three advanced municipalities, Diissel- 
dorf and Charlottenburg among them, have also erected 
homes for unmarried persons, in which the room prices 
are no less than those offered by private enterprise but 
the conveniences and safeguards for health much greater. 
A great deal of effort has been put forth to reduce the 
evil of renting sleeping accommodations for the night or 



304 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

day, where the tenant, usually a young working-man or 
working- woman, must vacate the quarters in the morning, 
the bed often being occupied by a night worker during 
the daytime. These Schlajstellen ("sleeping spots," 
often Httle better than lairs) furnish the only home of 
thousands of unmarried workers in Germany, a little 
box or bundle containing all of their worldly goods; 
often without daylight or sufficient air, they are the 
most repugnant spot in the modern housing evil, and 
as yet little has been done to relieve the situation. 
By a careful tenement inspection through municipal 
bureaus, which also act as intelligence offices in finding 
homes for workers, as well as through a careful super- 
vision of the means of transportation, the city seeks to 
mitigate the tenement evils and to bring the workers 
as far as possible into districts where sunlight and air 
are accessible. 

While overcrowding with all of its attendant evils 
shows itself in the barracks-tenements of the suburbs, 
its worst forms are apparent in the inner city. It is 
the restoration and modernization of this oldest part of 
the city which forms one of the hardest problems of 
German municipal administration. This core of build- 
ings in Frankfort, Leipsic, Strasburg and many an- 
other ancient city offers difficulties which might baffle 
an administration even as efficient and powerful as the 
governing boards of these great cities. The visitor 
who wanders through the streets of old Leipsic, for 
instance, at the time of the semi-annual fair, when the 
narrow streets seethe with a mass of humanity, — 
streaming through narrow alleyways, surging under 
cavernous arches, disappearing into unnoticed crevices, 
and bubbling forth from areaway and cellar, — scarcely 
realizes that the focussing of such a volume of trade into 
such a contracted heart and centre is only possible 
through the careful work of a generation, which has 
removed walls, opened streets, brought sanitary de- 



THE CITY AS A BUSINESS AND SOCIAL AGENT 305 

vices to courtyard and cellar, and light and air to attic 
and alley, — in short has converted a mediaeval city into 
a place where the business of an empire can be trans- 
acted. If one wishes to realize what the mediaeval 
German city was before modern technique levelled its 
walls and laid on their foundation splendid promenades 
and drove streets from the railway station on the pe- 
riphery through the outer girdle into the heart of the 
ancient stronghold, let him visit the cities of Italy 
where no such transformation has taken place and pic- 
ture to himself Frankfort as old Naples without Naples' 
sun, or Strasburg as Orvieto without Orvieto's dis- 
infecting breezes. The smells which accumulate in 
the courts and hallways of the older German houses 
during a rainy winter or the " still, sad odor of humanity " 
that lingers in the vestibule of so many a German dwelling 
or hotel are an inheritance from the day when the town 
dweller must have had a supreme indifference to odors. 
The cutting through of streets, the sanitation of 
houses, the conversion of blocks of rookeries into dwel- 
lings which shall have the required amount of light and 
air are problems which have called for the best technical 
skill of highly trained municipal engineers. In Stras- 
burg and Hanover and Frankfort and Cologne and a 
dozen other cities one may admire the combination of 
practical sense with piety toward the art treasures of 
the past which has made the interior of the old German 
cities healthful without destroying their unique character. 
It is hardly necessary to say that the sanitary require- 
ments for new dwellings are rigid and are carefully 
enforced. The problem of ground utilization is every- 
where a hard one on account of the prodigious land 
values : the German engineer has studied it from every 
standpoint, not only as to the minimum requirements of 
light and air, but with concentration on what he re- 
gards as the key to the city's future, the development 
of the largest possible number of small dwellings. 



3o6 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

It will be clear from the foregoing that planning for 
future growth is regarded in Germany as one of the 
chief duties of the municipality. Those who attended 
the Expositions for City Building in Berlin and Diissel- 
dorf in 1910 and the Municipal Exposition at Diissel- 
dorf in 191 2 and similar expositions at Leipsic and 
Karlsruhe the following year were astonished at the grow- 
ing wealth of material which German architects and 
engineers had collected as to city planning and the wide 
field which their municipal experiments already covered. 
A brief visit to only a few of the cities of western Ger- 
many shows what success the municipal engineers have 
already won in combining the practical with the beauti- 
ful : Frankfort, with its strikingly practical arrange- 
ment of streets and squares, from the busy but never 
overcrowded Bahnhofplatz inward ; Stuttgart, with its 
graceful draping of houses upon the hills along ways of 
serpentine grace ; Charlottenburg, with its electric lines 
so bound in green that they add to the city's beauty, — ■ 
everjrwhere tasteful railway stations, tracks hidden in 
boscage, streams marged with public utilities which 
are carefully concealed behind an umbrageous sky line. 
In these and other cities one may see the attempts 
that have been made to carry out a division into build- 
ing sections, so that commerce may be isolated from 
residences and manufactures from both, as well for the 
health of the citizens as for the convenience of com- 
merce and manufacture. That the German cities have 
led the way in this combination of the useful and the 
beautiful, is in part the fruit of the combination of 
technical training with business administration, in part 
because German cities have had the problems of city 
growth thrust upon them so suddenly and with such 
imperative force. How well they are succeeding in 
their efforts is evidenced by the fact that even with 
all of the housing evils the percentage of mortality for 
the great cities is less than the average for the empire 



THE CITY AS A BUSINESS AND SOCIAL AGENT 307 

and even in the factory districts of Diisseldorf the rate 
is less than in the rural districts of the Prussian East. 

"To build for health and commerce is to build for 
beauty." This motto on the advance program of the 
Berhn Exposition for City Building in 19 10 has become 
the watchword of German cities. They received, in- 
deed, a rich heritage of art from the Middle Ages, which 
not even centuries of decay and neglect could destroy. 
With increasing care and piety the present-day munici- 
palities seek to preserve what has been handed down, — 
old houses with their Renaissance panelKng, old churches, 
fountains and monuments, — and to provide new 
objects of art which shall be in keeping with the old. 
The Germans are extremely sensitive to the sacrifice 
of many of their picturesque city quarters to modern 
progress, and the pubHc watches with jealous care to 
see that the vigorous growth springing up from the old 
municipal roots does not destroy the gnarled beauty of 
the ancient stock. Nuremberg's inner kernel, with its 
carefully restored buildings, graceful fountains and 
neatly washed old streets; Hildesheim's wonderful 
square, whose jewel, the House of the Butchers' Guild, 
recently gutted by fire, has been so artistically restored, 
are like quiet, cleanly kept museums whose walls are 
girdled about by the uneasy pulsing hfe of the new time. 
It is only in some of the churches on the Rhine and in 
Bavaria that one finds mouldering decay, due less to a 
lack of will to preserve than to rehgious differences, 
which unfortunately have made them confessional in- 
stead of national monuments. 

Not merely in preserving the old but in the architec- 
ture of the new each German city has striven to retain 
its individuahty. It has been charged that modern 
German architecture is formless, that buildings hke the 
new opera house in Frankfort and the Royal Library 
in BerKn impress by their soHdity rather than by their 
grace. This is not the place to go into the values of 



3o8 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

German art ; but it may be said that a certain solidity 
has been characteristic of German architecture in all 
periods since the thirteenth century, which saw the 
erection of such structures as the cathedral at Mayence 
and the churches of the Teutonic Knights in the North- 
east. That German artists and German authorities, 
imperial, state and civic, sinned greatly against good 
taste in the first quarter-century of the new empire in 
their zeal to fill the squares and parks of the Fatherland 
with splendid testimonials to the prosperity of the 
present and with proud memorials of the past, cannot 
be denied. It is only too apparent in the public build- 
ings of the time and in the rage for monuments which 
swept Germany like a storm, dotting market square 
and esplanade with buxom Germanias and shaggy 
Kaiser Wilhelms, awakening Barbarossas and high- 
breathing Bismarcks, all of which overbubbling en- 
thusiasm of the epic period of the new empire found its 
classic expression in the sadly squeezed monument to 
the first emperor on the Schlossplatz in Berlin and the 
long array of heroes of chronology lining the Siegesallee 
in the Tiergarten. All of these give evidence of feudal 
enthusiasm and military ardor on the part of the ruling 
class and of newly awakened patriotism in the folk- 
soul, but as a phase of German art they are negligible 
and are quite overshadowed by structures like the 
Reichstag building in Berlin, with its noble and essen- 
tially German interior. After the beginning of the 
twentieth century two tendencies became especially 
discernable in German civic art : the trend towards 
simphcity, and the effort, which we have noticed also 
in city planning, to harmonize and fuse subject and site. 
The first may be observed in such buildings as the new 
Rathaus built around the old tower of the Pleissenburg 
in Leipsic or the great department store on the Leip- 
ziger Strasse in Berlin and similar business houses in 
Diisseldorf, where there has been a most successful 



THE CITY AS A BUSINESS AND SOCIAL AGENT 309 

effort to pair simplicity of structure with practical 
usableness. The second finds expression in Lederer 
and Schaudt's mighty Bismarck in Hamburg, where 
on a bold headland the titanic originaHty of the man 
springs into prominence. 

It is not merely in artistic buildings and monuments 
that the present-day German municipality has sought 
to build the city beautiful. Amid the wildernesses 
of brick and mortar the German love of nature finds 
its account in park and cemetery. Such wonderful 
parks as the Hofgarten in Diisseldorf and the Rosental 
in Leipsic are not to be found in every municipality, but 
there is none that has not expended large sums, not merely 
for great parks, which German neatness and discipHne 
keep in perfect order for the enjoyment of the many, but 
for the numerous green spots which, verdant with grateful 
shade and beautiful shrubbery, break with their waving 
poplars the sky fine of brick and stone. Here, where 
in an intimate corner one finds such deKcate appeals 
to the fancy as the Marchen figure in Leipsic or the 
Lessing monument in the Berlin Tiergarten, one appre- 
ciates that the true heart of the German people beats 
not merely in the intense atmosphere of the smoke- 
snorting factories beyond the poplars, but also in the 
cool corners of a romantic worship of the beautiful. 
And when one enters the Central Cemetery in Berlin- 
Friedrichsfelde, perhaps the most beautiful of all park- 
cemeteries in the German-speaking world, where the 
dead sleep under roses and eternal green, one feels that 
German sentiment is no less deep and the German soul 
no less responsive to noble impulses than in the stricken 
days of a century ago when Holderiin sang of Grecian 
urns and Schiller called forth from an inspired fancy 
the theory of the "soul beautiful." 

In the strenuous hour of his struggle with the problems 
of existence and growth then the German city-builder 
has not forgotten that beauty goes hand in hand with 



3IO THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

utility and health. The city father has, however, 
often been reproached with forgetting popular culture 
and those municipal undertakings which including free 
libraries, lecture courses, playgrounds, etc., are summed 
up occasionally under the insulting rubric, "Uplift of 
the masses." There is no denying that the lack of 
communal efforts of this kind is one of the things which 
strike the American visitor most unfavorably. With 
respect to children's playgrounds, the development since 
the beginning of the twentieth century has been ex- 
tremely rapid and has gone to a point where the larger 
cities have provided a considerable if by no means ade- 
quate number of grounds both within the city and in 
the woods and glens of the periphery, where the youngsters 
receive in their play the same efficient supervision that 
is to accompany them later on through the business of 
Ufe. Of Hbraries there is no lack, but they are usually 
collections of historical and scientific value and not 
popular libraries in the American understanding of the 
term. In 1910 out of 540 cities of more than ten thou- 
sand inhabitants only 168 maintained municipal read- 
ing rooms, and even in some of these a small fee was 
demanded of the users of books. Berlin, which has had 
a public library since 1850, established its first municipal 
reading room in 1896. Only very recently have chil- 
dren's reading rooms been opened, and these mainly 
through private benevolence in the face of the char- 
acteristically German argument that they would keep 
the much harassed German child indoors when he should 
be taking his needed exercise. Some theorists have gone 
so far as to suggest that children's reading rooms should 
be opened only in bad weather. 

Strange as all of this may sound to the foreigner, it 
opens up an interesting view of the German attitude 
toward popular culture. No country has hved so 
completely in the "paper age" as Germany. In recent 
decades no three nations together have equalled the 



THE CITY AS A BUSINESS AND SOCIAL AGENT 311 

Fatherland's output in books, and among these books a 
considerable number is devoted to popular education. 
Aside from the cheap editions of the classics and thou- 
sands of paper-bound popular books of instruction on 
every subject, from penny Chinese grammars to "How 
can I become an Expert Toymaker?" the great pub- 
lishers of Leipsic and BerHn flood the world with cheap 
series, covering well-nigh the whole field of modern cul- 
ture, written by university men of high standing. Then, 
as we shall see, every city offers opportunity for school- 
ing after the elementary school in the continuation 
schools. Besides this, there are museums with penny 
guide books, concerts with seats well-nigh free and per- 
formances of the best plays at the cheapest of rates. 
"What then does das Volk want more in the way of 
opportunities for culture?" asks the German city father, 
who, like all Germans, believes that what is to be really 
valuable to the possessor must mean some financial 
sacrifice, be it ever so little. It must be remembered 
also that the Germans are a homogeneous people, and 
that the Volksschule provides for their education to a 
point where at least a basis for an appreciation of Ger- 
many's culture has been laid. 

There is no denying that there is also a tendency to 
look upon the demand for "popular culture" with dis- 
favor because it offends against class prejudice. Ger- 
many is not a democratic country and there is still a 
feeling of academic pride which makes of culture a jewel 
that is not to be thrown before the snouts of the lower 
classes. This sentiment is waning. That it has not 
jdelded altogether to the democratizing influences of 
recent decades is not entirely the fault of the intellec- 
tual classes. Contemporaneous with the rise of in- 
dustry came, as we have seen, a rise of class feehng among 
the industrial workers, replacing the feudal class dis- 
tinctions by industrial and economic distinctions. The 
Social Democracy has through its press, clubs and lee- 



312 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

ture courses done much for popular culture ; but by the 
organization of a class consciousness it has sealed up the 
wells of private benevolence, which are usually the first 
sources from which free Ubraries and lecture courses 
come. 

There is also something in the argument of Dr. Most 
of Diisseldorf , who in discussing this question says : 
"It is a monstrosity to offer a man Hbraries and con- 
certs who is not in a position to provide himself with 
a decent home, clothes and food." ^ The economic and 
social problems which came with the rapid growth of 
the cities have chained the attention of German com- 
munities and tied up their resources to such an extent 
that the less urgent duties have had to be neglected. 
That an awakening has come, however, with regard 
to the right of the masses to something more than 
drilling for life as industrial machines is apparent on 
many sides. Following the lead of the Vienna univer- 
sity, the German universities at last took up the matter 
of extension work and proceeded to give it the same slow 
but careful and methodical development that they 
have given to other sides of education. In 191 2 fifteen 
universities and eight technical universities were assist- 
ing in this work. Free lecture courses on scientific and 
literary subjects, with abundant opportunities for prac- 
tical exercises, were organized by the Humboldt and 
Lessing Academies in Berlin and the Humboldt Academy 
in Breslau and by similar organizations in Frankfort 
and Hamburg. As yet, however, the municipality 
plays only a small part in these endeavors. In 191 1 
only sixty-four German cities gave or assisted in giving 
public lecture courses, with the expenditure of about 
twenty thousand dollars. Six cities, however, had 
established or contributed largely to the establishment 
and support of commercial universities {Handelshoch- 
schulen), which attracted students from every civilized 

1 Die deutsche Stadt und ihre Verwaltung. Vol. 3. 



THE CITY AS A BUSINESS AND SOCIAL AGENT 313 

land ; and courses of university grade have been given 
in Hamburg and Frankfort by institutes supported 
by the municipality. It is of interest to note that 
these courses gave birth in Frankfort to the first 
municipal imiversity in Germany, a non-theological 
institution, which opened its doors in October, 19 14, 
and bids fair to introduce some radical departures 
from the conservative usages of its staid sister insti- 
tutions. 

To one side of popular culture the German cities have 
from the beginning devoted considerable care and money, 
— to the cultivation of music among the masses. Mu- 
sical standards are high, even amongst the poorest classes ; 
and instead of municipal golf hnks and athletic fields, 
the German workman has had his music suppHed by 
the municipality for many years, either free or at a 
nominal cost. Aside from the open air concert fur- 
nished on Sundays and holidays by the local military 
band on the public square in every place that boasts 
of the neighborhood of a barracks, a great number of 
the larger cities, nearly one-half of those over twenty 
thousand in 191 1, support public concerts in halls or 
gardens, for which the admission is very small, usually 
from five to twelve and one-half cents. For this pur- 
pose over half a milHon dollars was spent by these 
municipahties in 1 9 1 1 . More than seventy of the greater 
German cities have orchestras, whose members are paid 
and on retirement pensioned by the city, and there is 
as keen a rivalry between cities of the same rank for 
possession of the best musical equipment as there is in 
the beautification of parks and squares and in the care 
of streets and drainage. And it need scarcely be said 
that the programs of these cheap concerts are no less 
classical than those offered to the patrons of the Palmen- 
garten, the aristocratic resort in Frankfort, or the 
fashionable restaurants on the Friedrichstrasse and 
Unter den Linden in Berlin. 



314 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

The German city administrator recognizes that good 
music is as much a necessity as good air and water. He 
also believes in the theatre as an educational institution. 
The rich patronage which the German courts have 
always extended to the theatre, and which costs the 
monarchs in Berlin, Dresden, Munich and the other 
capitals of the empire considerable sums annually, has 
been assumed by the municipality in all cities which have 
advanced to theatre rank, including many communities 
of very small size. Many of these own their own 
theatres, where opera during the season and dramas are 
given usually through a lessee, the city retaining a 
voice in the control of performance and program and 
subsidizing the undertaking as far as the municipal 
budget will allow. For this purpose 164 German cities 
spent in 191 1 over one and one-half milHon dollars. 
The pressure upon the city fathers for the improvement 
of the theatre is always strong, especially from the Social 
Democrats, who as a matter of policy advocate direct 
municipal management and a larger outlay for theatrical 
purposes. Special performances at very low prices 
are given at intervals during the year at the municipal 
theatres, the tickets being usually distributed through 
clubs and associations, whose members enjoy free ad- 
mission in return for a small club appropriation. As a 
matter of course the best artists in the direct or indirect 
employ of the city figure in these popular productions ; 
occasionally travelling companies of high artistic merit, 
like that from the Ducal Theatre in Weimar, are en- 
gaged. Of the 133 theatres which gave performances 
of this kind in 191 1, a number gave special performances 
of classical plays for children, with a free distribution of 
tickets in the Volksschulen; and if one would learn what 
part the founders of the German stage like Lessing and 
Schiller or later artists like Grillparzer and Freytag play 
in modern German education, one needs only to give 
himself the delightful experience of sitting amid the 



THE CITY AS A BUSINESS AND SOCIAL AGENT 315 

bubbling enthusiasm of Young Germany during the 
performance of Tell or Minna von Barnhelm or the 
Journalisten. A few cities, like Altona, for the most 
part smaller places, have established municipal moving 
picture theatres in order to sanitate and elevate this 
important means of amusement and education. 

Among tendencies in the trend toward an education 
which shall not merely spell utility must be mentioned 
the effort to make the museums increasingly useful 
to the masses. Rare indeed is the small German city 
which does not through the opening to the public on 
certain days of school or institutional collections or 
through a small municipal museum offer opportunity 
to see at least a collection of casts of ancient works of 
art and a few pictures of merit. The larger cities 
which enjoy the possession of older galleries devote each 
year increasing sums to the support of their collections. 
Here as elsewhere the old centrifugal tendencies in 
Germany worked to the advantage of places which 
though now far from the imperial or state centre, still 
retain collections dating from the munificence of some 
petty dynasty long since mediatized or expelled. Thus 
the student who would know Germany's holdings of the 
world's masterpieces must visit not only Berlin, Dresden 
and Munich, but also Cassel and Diisseldorf. To these 
older collections modern civic wealth, spurred on by 
civic pride, has added such collections as those in the 
city galleries at Frankfort and Leipsic. Thus the 
cities, not one or two, but a dozen, are bidders for works 
of art, and load their budgets with items for this pur- 
pose which a century ago would have stocked the 
Dresden gallery. Up to recent years no special effort 
had been put forth to make these collections usable 
for the great public, beyond opening the galleries with- 
out charge on certain days in the week. Since 1900, 
however, a great movement has spread with the watch- 
words, "art for everybody," "art in daily life" and 



3i6 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

"art in the life of the child." One result has been that 
several cities have made an effort to increase the use of 
the city collections by the "unartistic" classes by the 
addition of cheap books of information to the formi- 
dable and expensive catalogues and the introduction of 
lecture courses with expert guidance through the gal- 
leries. 



CHAPTER XV 

Conservatism and Progress in Education 

Goethe once remarked that every writer whom the 
Germans admire is a great teacher. He might have 
gone further and said that every German of full moral 
stature is a natural pedagogue. There is something in 
the German character, with its gift for method and its 
innate sense of discipHne, which makes the Germans 
as a nation the best teachers and scholars in the world, 
something which makes of the empire a vast school- 
house in which every age and rank teaches and is taught. 
Everywhere within the national boundary posts rule 
the order and regularity of the model school with its 
system of merit and demerit, of absolute rule and un- 
questioning obedience, varied by violent and immature 
protest, which in the end invariably yields to better 
counsels of order and disciphne. This love of order, 
the gift for disciphne and submergence of the individual 
will, the reverence for the traditional, all of which find 
their expression poHtically in the submission of a people 
of the highest moral development occupying the apex 
of modern culture to a government which is still ab- 
solutist and semi-feudal, show a briUiant reverse in 
the efficiency of the nation's social and business or- 
ganization. The colossal mihtary system with its 
machine-Hke order, the well-ordered administration of 
every form of associative effort from the city of Berlin 
to the humblest rural consumers' league in Pomerania 
or Silesia, the organization of industry and commerce 
which brought Germany in less than half a century to 
the second place among exporting and carrying powers, 

317 



3i8 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

— all derive their efficiency from the German ability 
to "take training," all reflect in a way the methods of 
the school, as indeed aU are closely associated with 
Germany's vast school system. 

It is not merely that from the Renaissance down we 
find a German name to place beside one chosen from any 
other race to adorn the Kst of great teachers. Such men 
as Melanchthon, Leibniz, Fichte and Wilhelm von 
Humboldt are not sporadic offshoots of the race but the 
normal product of racial development. Their work is 
intertwined with the whole history of Germany's rise to 
greatness. On the other hand, there has hardly been a 
great German from Luther to Frederick the Great and 
Bismarck who has not built himself in some way into 
the nation's school system. Even the petty despots of 
the eighteenth century, with their dissolute lives and 
cynical scorn of the public welfare, took good and gener- 
ous care of the schools. One of them, Schiller's ancestral 
tyrant, Karl Eugen of Wiirtemberg, sold his peasants 
to fight French battles and loaded down the hills about 
Stuttgart with lavish structures paid for by the blood 
and sweat of his subjects, and yet in the days of his 
broken tyranny gave himself up, like another broken 
tyrant, the younger Dionysius of Syracuse, to an enthu- 
siasm for teaching. 

The school is no less intertwined with the nation's 
present than with its past. Every part of Germany's 
system is dependent on the school and interlocked with 
it; even the highest birth and greatest wealth are im- 
avaihng to win real place in the intricate mechanism of 
the nation's government or industry unless the holder 
has at least gone through the form of a regular prepara- 
tion in the higher institutions or the technical schools. 
Like the army, the school does allow special privileges 
to those who have name and wealth, but like the army 
it is also democratic in permitting no one, whatever 
his birth or means, to escape its discipline. It applies 



CONSERVATISM AND PROGRESS IN EDUCATION 319 

its acid test to all who pass through its hands and marks 
them indehbly as "good," "fair" or "deficient." And 
as the Germans feel that the army guarantees their 
national existence from without, so the school is the 
sheet anchor of Germany's greatness within. Not only 
must every German attend school, but every one who 
aspires to be more than a mere laborer or lay figure in 
the nation's progress must make school the serious 
business of his Hfe, for throughout fife he is tagged with 
the results of his schooling. It has been often said that 
the Hfe of the German boy of class is a hurdle track of 
examinations, each of them no formal paper test, but the 
fitting cKmax of years of effort. At sixteen years of 
age or thereabouts comes the " volunteer examination," 
which allows him the privilege of one year's service in the 
army as a volunteer instead of two years as a conscript ; 
upon that follows three years later the graduation exami- 
nation, which frees him from the school and admits him 
to the universities and preparation for a learned career. 
On these follow the doctor examination winning the title 
so necessary for a full place in the intellectual-social 
system, and the state's examination, fijially admitting 
him to his profession. In addition the technical students 
and the young disciples of medicine and law have their 
university path and professional apprenticeship strewn 
with practical tests . Each examination is conscientiously 
conducted, and the professional man goes through life 
tagged with the result of each. Once entered upon a 
career higher than that of a mere hewer of wood and 
drawer of water, there is no avoiding the hurdles, and 
if the unfortunate candidate knocks one over or tips it, 
the fact is at once noted, and he is lucky if it is not 
henceforth a serious handicap to him in the course of 
life. He may try again, but a second success cannot 
wipe out the memory of the first failure. 

The intricacy of the German school system is natural 
in view of its age and of the complex interests to be 



320 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

served. School organization and administration is con- 
servative everywhere, and in a country like Germany, 
where, as has been said, not altogether waggishly, one- 
half of the people are busy teaching and giving examina- 
tions to the other half, the schools are so interwoven with 
the national Hfe that they are inextricably mixed up 
with age-old social, confessional and racial problems, 
some of which must wait yet many generations for a 
solution. The result is that the educational system in 
Germany is like a time-honored building, which has had 
a wing added here and a window punched yonder, with 
marks still remaining from the removal of unsightly 
parts, so that the whole makes on the observer the im- 
pression of a structure that is extremely efficient, though 
formless and in places much in need of repair. Only a 
few experts know their way around in the rambling 
building, and even these are unwilling to trust them- 
selves into some of its nooks and crannies without the 
guidance of the minister of education or some one of his 
satraps. 

Each biennial meeting of the great elementary teachers' 
federation, the Deutscher Lehrerverein, which had in 
1914 over one hundred and twenty thousand members, 
calls for a reform and a codification of the school laws 
in the larger German states. The convention of the 
association in Diisseldorf in 1908 demanded an imperial 
law which should take school affairs, hke the military, 
the post and the telegraph, largely out of the hands of 
the individual states. This call for a stronger central- 
ization in school affairs has foimd few echoes in Ger- 
many, since there are many who believe that the highly 
diversified character of the empire requires that abun- 
dant freedom should be left not only to the individual 
states but to the local school authorities as well. It is 
therefore not altogether a misfortune that political and 
confessional rivalries in the two largest German states, 
Prussia and Bavaria, have thus far prevented any simpli- 



CONSERVATISM AND PROGRESS IN EDUCATION 321 

fication and unification of the school laws and will doubt- 
less long continue to stand in the way of such a move. 
As a result of the lack of legislation both of these states 
intrust their ministers of education with wide authority, 
and the regulations issued by the ministry have piled 
up into a mass of precedent which is about as binding 
as law. 

The lack of a broad basis of law is particularly felt in 
the case of the Volksschule, the elementary school, upon 
which approximately 94 per cent of all Germans are de- 
pendent for their education. The growing spirit of 
democracy which we have noticed in so many other 
phases of German life demands that all children should 
be required to attend the Volksschule, and that the way 
be opened for the graduates of the Volksschule into the 
secondary school system and from there into the higher 
callings. To the demand for a greater democratization 
of the elementary schools is added that of the schoolmen 
for a greater elasticity in the program of studies, and 
another, emanating from representatives of many classes, 
for the entire secularization of the schools, or at least 
for a removal of church supervision of religious teaching. 
In the fight for the unburdening of the schools from 
religious instruction many of those interested in the 
secondary schools have also joined. Secondary educa- 
tion, which has practically won the fight waged since 
1890 for breaking the monopoly of the classical Gym- 
nasium and the admission of modem culture as repre- 
sented by the natural sciences and the modern languages 
to equal rank with the so-called humanities as a prepara- 
tion for the professions, demands with increasing insist- 
ence to be freed from all religious guardianship. Add to 
these manifestations of the growth of a new spirit the 
rise of technical education, the demand for greater facili- 
ties for manual training and the yearning for more 
individualism in the work of both teacher and pupil as 
an offset to the growing bureaucracy of administration, 



322 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

and we have some of the reforms which occupy the 
minds of those who have been working for a greater 
adaptation of the work of the schools to the forward 
movement of the nation. More insistent still in their 
demands on the purse of the nation are the continuation 
schools, which extend over the whole field of practical, 
vocational instruction and occupy the young army of 
Germany's workers from two to five years after leaving 
the Volksschule. This graduate instruction of the working 
class has taken on ever greater proportions and represents 
Germany's greatest advance in the educational field since 
the beginning of the new century. 

Such a glance as that which we have just taken at the 
tendencies of progress in matters of education in Germany 
shows the intricacy of the system by which the Germans 
have won first place among the greater nations in the 
matter of schools. The foundation of this system is 
the Volksschule, which is in the truest sense of the word 
the basis of the nation's greatness. The success of the 
Volksschule has been said to rest upon two factors : the 
severe professional training of the teachers, to whom 
the state assures a fixed and permanent appointment 
at a living wage with a fair pension, and the rigid carry- 
ing out of the law compelling parents to send their chil- 
dren to school. By the former the schools are assured 
of a fairly adequate number of male teachers who have 
been trained for six years for the profession, by the 
latter the German child is led to look upon the attendance 
on school for eight years during approximately forty- 
eight weeks of the year as fixed and unavoidable a 
requirement of nature as the coming and going of the 
seasons. 

Since the days of Frederick the Great education has 
been compulsory in Prussia. The same requirement 
has long prevailed, of course, in all of the German states, 
and begins practically everywhere with the sixth year, 
continuing until the fourteenth. Wherever, as in 



CONSERVATISM AND PROGRESS IN EDUCATION 323 

Bavaria, schooling covers only the thirteenth year, the 
child is not permitted to leave school until he has passed 
an examination showing that the required work has 
been properly done. So thoroughly do the German ad- 
ministrative ofl&cers enforce this requirement that il- 
Hteracy has practically disappeared within the black- 
white-red boundary posts, scarcely one in two thousand 
conscripts drawn in for service at twenty years of age 
being without schooling. What the Volksschule, the 
continental parallel of New England's Httle red school- 
house, has done since the days of the great Frederick in 
nationahzing the eastern provinces of Prussia has been 
indicated in a previous chapter. In order to study its 
effectiveness one needs only to compare the educational 
equipment of the natives of the neighboring provinces 
of Belgium, Austria and Russia with that of the German 
worker, who of whatever condition in life, can always 
read and write and has mastered the elements of mathe- 
matics, geography and the history of his native land. 
In 1899 the German fleet visited Vigo in Spain, where 
several Spanish cruisers were anchored. During the 
fraternizing of the jackies of the two nations mail was 
delivered to the German sailors from their consulate. 
Great was the astonishment of the Spaniards when every 
German tar received mail and their marvelling passed 
all bounds when it was seen that each one proceeded to 
open and read his own letters. 

Rare indeed is the German child who escapes the 
school. He enters its portals in obedience to a law as 
inevitable as the coming of the equinoxes; once there, 
his training goes forward in the elements of knowledge, 
with the constant by-products of religion and patriotism, 
with military regularity and precision. The German 
elementary teacher takes his place beside the German 
drill sergeant as the foundation of the nation's unique 
position in the world. In addition to the idealism 
which makes the teacher the world over willing to lay 



324 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

up for himself treasures of a sort not to be deposited in 
banks, the German Volksschule teacher enjoys a prepara- 
tion for his work which gives him a unique position 
when compared with those of his craft elsewhere. No 
elementary teacher in the service of the German state 
"happens" into the profession; none uses it merely as 
a stepping stone to some other Hfe work. The candidate 
for a teacher's p>osition after graduation from the Volks- 
schide spends three or more years in a preparatory institu- 
tion, which is in most cases a state school, and then three 
years more in a state seminary. If he enjoys a stipend, 
as many do, during the years of instruction, he binds 
himself to enter the state's service as teacher; in any 
case he finds himself at twenty years of age with other 
professions closed to him, but with a thorough equip- 
ment for his life's work in giving elementary instruction 
to Young Germany. When he enters the state's service, 
his salary is small, — the average for Germany is under 
five hundred dollars a year, — but so long as he performs 
his duties and keeps free from Radical or Socialist en- 
tanglements, his position is secure for life ; he is entirely 
indep>endent of political changes, and on retirement he 
enjoys a pension which enables him to face the future 
without misgivings. He may find opportunities for 
university study, it is possible to become the principal 
of a school, and in some cases — though not in Prussia 
— school inspector ; but as a general thing the higher 
walks of the profession are closed to him with the finality 
of the German system of specialization, which decides 
the future of every boy before he is well into long trousers. 
The primary school-teacher would not be a German if 
he did not love his work and give himself up to it with 
devotion. His peculiar training has given him what 
teachers the world over most lack, a pride in profession, 
an esprit de corps, which may chafe under feudal and 
clerical restrictions but is sincerely religious and devotedly 
patriotic. 



CONSERVATISM AND PROGRESS IN EDUCATION 325 

Naturally the rapid growth of Germany's population 
has put a tremendous strain upon the elementary school 
system ; and it is inevitable that in many sections great 
numbers of children are still herded together under one 
teacher. Especially in the Prussian East, where the 
school has had an important task in the nationalization 
of the Polish elements, there is a great lack of teachers 
and a consequent overcrowding of the schools. In the 
period 1891-1912 the number of children in the elemen- 
tary schools of the empire had increased from approxi- 
mately eight to ten millions, the number of teachers 
from 120,000 to 180,000, the average per teacher falling 
from 66 to 55, while the average expenditure per scholar 
had doubled, from 30 to 60 marks. It is unavoidable 
that a large number of children have to be kept on half 
time ; and according to figures submitted at the conven- 
tion of the Deutscher Lehrerverein in 191 2 one and one- 
quarter million of the children were still crowded into 
classes of from 60 to 150. Saxony, whose industrial 
development has rivalled that of the Prussian West, had 
in 1906 more than 6 per cent of its primary pupils in 
classes of over 80. Conditions have, however, improved 
in this regard, for, as has just been shown, while from 1891 
to 191 2 the enrolment of the Volksschule increased 25 
per cent, the number of teachers increased 30.5 per cent, 
and the average disbursement per scholar doubled. 

The Lehrerverein found, indeed, the increase of teachers 
quite inadequate to keep up with the demands of modem 
life; and pointed out that in the same period the em- 
ployees of postal and telegraph services had increased 
87 per cent. The comparison is another testimonial to 
the wide-awakeness and solidarity of the German 
teachers, who are constantly dinning into the ears of 
the ministry what they regard as the inadequacy of the 
school system : that of ten millions of children four 
millions are crowded into large classes and receive 
scarcely more than the beginnings of instruction, that 



326 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

the school buildings are much inferior to those in Eng- 
land and America and that the teachers are underpaid 
and overworked. To these laments, which are heard 
from teachers the world over, they add certain ones 
pecuhar to the German system: the struggle with the 
confessional question and the caste spirit, which closes 
to the teacher in the elementary school the avenues of 
promotion to higher places in the hierarchy of educa- 
tion by demanding for these places the university train- 
ing from which in Prussia and some other states he is 
excluded. 

Beside, and as a continuation of, the Volksschule exist, 
especially in the larger towns, Burgerschulen or "middle 
schools," which by the addition of a modern language 
and other studies prolong the child's training for one 
or more years beyond the eight years required for the 
primary school. They are a sort of link between ele- 
mentary and secondary education, opening the way 
into certain trade and technical schools; but gradua- 
tion from them does not admit to the privileges of one 
year military service, a right which entitles the posses- 
sor to regard himself as of the upper caste, and which 
automatically falls to the graduates of the so-called 
" higher schools." 

These higher schools, which make up what may be 
called secondary education in Germany, form a some- 
what intricate system, and dovetail at last into a higher 
trade or technical institution or into the universities. 
The striking and undemocratic feature of the system, 
which has already been noted, is that the Volksschule 
does not form the basis for all education, but that second- 
ary education is built up separately and independently 
of it. The German system does not regard it as desir- 
able that the children of the classes, the future political 
and intellectual rulers of the nation, should mingle in 
tender years in schoolroom and on the playground 
with the children of the masses, and there are not many 



CONSERVATISM AND PROGRESS IN EDUCATION 327 

voices heard against the caste segregation which is so 
old and integral a part of the Fatherland's institutions. 

Increased criticism is heard, however, among the popu- 
lar parties of the speciaKzation which excludes graduates 
of the primary school, except in very rare instances, from 
the possibility of later transference to higher institutions 
and from participation in the professions and the so- 
called "higher callings." Nothing less than the secondary 
school with a six-year course, — the Pro gymnasia and Real- 
schulen, or private institutions approved by the govern- 
ment and much more expensive than the pubKc schools 
— will obtain the coveted "one year volunteer" privilege 
and admission to the higher schools of agriculture and art 
as well as to the second class of technical schools and pre- 
ferred positions in the government service. The schools 
with a nine-year course — Gymnasia, Realgymnasia and 
Oberrealschule — are the only road to the university de- 
grees and professions. All of these schools take the boy 
at nine years of age, after he has received three years 
of elementary schooling, which may be had in the Volks- 
schule, in preparatory institutions attached to the second- 
ary school or in the licensed elementary schools, which 
serve their purpose in preparing for the higher institu- 
tions. Several of the German states, including Bavaria, 
Saxony and Baden, do not license private elementary 
schools, and the existence of these private Vorschulen 
is condemned by German pedagogues because it breaks 
the symmetry of the whole educational plan. As has 
been remarked, the number of voices is increasing year 
by year which call for a reorganization that shall in 
some way build secondary education upon a broader 
basis, opening the higher schools to every child, accord- 
ing to lus ability, without regard to the social and finan- 
cial standing of his parents. 

For the present, then, secondary education is not to 
be regarded as a link between the Volksschule and the 
institutions of university grade. Only in extraordinary 



328 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

instances can the graduate of the popular school or its 
extension, the "middle school" (Biirgerschule) , find 
his way into any higher institution of learning ; he does 
not enjoy the privilege of one-year military service. It is 
about this privilege that the whole system of secondary 
education revolves ; and it maintains in the higher schools 
of Germany a spirit of caste, which like every other mani- 
festation of the same kind is directly opposed to the 
spirit of liberal culture. It is this privilege, joined to 
the pressing demand of modern life for early specializa- 
tion, that maintains and fills the group of six-year schools, 
— the Progymnasium, Prorealgymnasium and Real- 
schule, — whose graduates, having enjoyed to their 
sixteenth year or thereabouts a strenuous training based 
on classical and modern culture, pass out into business 
or into industrial and technical institutions which pre- 
pare them for the middle walks of technical or official 
life. The number of such schools increased rapidly as 
Germany's industrial and commercial life grew and 
new lines of industry opened, demanding an earlier 
apprenticeship. The six-year schools are an earnest 
effort to meet these demands and at the same time fur- 
nish the business and industrial leaders of Germany 
with a sound basis of liberal culture : unfortunately the 
feeling of caste attached to the "one-year privilege" 
attracts into them a great many whose parents can ill 
afford the sacrifice, and many others who could best 
serve their generation in the lower walks of life. 

The number of such intellectually bad investments 
is naturally much smaller in the group of nine-year 
institutions, which prepare for the universities and for 
all of the higher technical and official places. At their 
head marches the time-honored Gymnasium, where 
Greek and Latin still maintain their age-old position as 
the backbone of a liberal culture. After it comes in 
point of prestige the Realgymnasium, which has banished 
Greek and installed the modern languages in its place; 



CONSERVATISM AND PROGRESS IN EDUCATION 329 

and last of all the Oberrealschule, where instruction rests 
on modern languages, mathematics and the natural 
sciences. Not over one per cent of the school enrolment 
of Germany is in attendance on this group of nine-year 
schools in any one year; and the demands which the 
schools make is best evidenced by the fact that a con- 
siderable percentage of those who enter drop out without 
completing the course, for the most part after passing 
the one-year military service examination. Neverthe- 
less the number of these schools has constantly increased, 
to the alarm of a considerable body of reactionary poh- 
ticians and, it must be said also, not a few progressive 
schoolmen. The former see in the growing number of 
men preparing for the universities, among them a large 
number very poorly equipped with financial means to 
launch themselves in the professions, an increase in the 
"intellectual proletariat," which since Bismarck's day 
has been charged with furnishing Social Democratic 
leaders and unruly spirits of all sorts. The latter feel 
that the learned professions are already overcrowded and 
that a large number of the graduates of the higher schools 
must of necessity enter pursuits and professions for 
which the secondary schools, from the Gymnasium, 
most determined in its defense of the classics, to the 
Oberrealschule, most liberal towards modern culture, 
give Httle preparation but rather an ww-preparation by 
their attitude toward the productive pursuits. 

In their own field, that of a liberal education as a basis 
for professional study, these schools are unique in the 
spirit which fills them and their teaching corps. To 
praise their accompHshments would be to paint the Hly 
and adorn the rose. Their teachers are practically all 
university-trained men, who with five years of study 
have passed the state's examination, usually after win- 
ning the title of *' doctor of philosophy." They have 
then spent one year in pedagogical study under seminary 
instruction with the school as a laboratory, followed by a 



330 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

trial year of teaching under the supervision of a vigorous 
school principal, before they are fully certificated. Add- 
ing to this a year of military service and a period of wait- 
ing averaging of late five years, during which the teacher 
does substitute work in preparation for a permanent 
appointment to a vacancy, and we see that the secondary 
school teacher passes through something like thirteen 
years of professional study and experimental teaching 
before the state finally appoints him to full charge of 
class work. Once appointed, however, he has a Hving 
salary, a fair pension allowance and a position that is 
secure if he does his duty and often secure when years of 
tenure have brought a slouchy performance of duty. 
Besides this, his social position, while yet considerably 
below that of the university professor, is nevertheless 
increasingly honorable. Under the circumstances it is 
no wonder that the secondary school-teachers are filled 
with a strong professional pride and a spirit of scientific 
investigation, which, to be sure, sometimes results in 
neglect of school duty for the sake of producing some 
well-nigh useless fragment of investigative scholarship, 
but which fires the work of the energetic and progressive 
teacher with the creative spirit that passes like a burning 
torch to his pupils and prepares them for the severe 
charms of university scholarship. 

It is apparent from the foregoing that the strength of 
Germany's educational system lies in specialization, its 
greatest weakness in the hard and fast way in which 
the pupil in the popular Volksschule is shut out from a 
share in the benefits of a liberal education. The ele- 
mentary school contains just what is necessary for the 
training of pious and patriotic townsmen and peasants; 
whatsoever is more than that belongs to the nation's 
social and intellectual elite, whose course diverges from 
that of the children of the Volk at about the tender age 
of nine. A similar specialization goes on within the 
secondary school system, for at the same age, i.e. on 



CONSERVATISM AND PROGRESS IN EDUCATION 331 

entry into the secondary school, the father of the pupil 
must decide whether his young hopeful is to enter a pro- 
fession for which the humanistic preparation of the 
Gymnasium is required or whether the humanistic- 
modern training of the Realgymnasium or the modern 
training of the Realschule best suits the youngster's 
future career. The task is by no means so difficult as 
it was before the royal decree of 1900 broke the gym- 
nasial monopoly. Up to that time only the Gymnasium 
could prepare the student for the study of law, medicine 
and theology at the university; since then Prussia, 
followed by the other states, has opened all the pro- 
fessions to students of the ''Real" institutions, except 
the profession of theology, where the training in Greek 
is still regarded as an absolute condition. 

Even before the School Conference of 1890 and the 
royal decree of 1900 efforts had been made to miti- 
gate the evil of this extreme specialization. As early 
as 1894 experiments had been made at Altona and 
Frankfort on the Main in the direction of postponing 
the decision as to the pupil's choice of preparation and 
a life calling, and a system had been evolved that was 
variously baptized according to its several varieties, the 
most popular of which bears the name of the ''Frank- 
fort plan," because first developed in the famous Goethe 
Gymnasium in Frankfort. This system provides for an 
arrangement of studies which permits the pupils of all 
three institutions — Gymnasium, Realgymnasium and 
Oherrealschule — to pursue their studies together for 
three years and then makes it possible for those who 
study Latin to go on two years longer together before a 
decision has finally to be made between the strictly 
humanistic and the humanistic-modern ideal of culture. 

The need of such a plan, by which the heavy responsi- 
bility of the parent is delayed until some idea can be 
had of the child's aptitudes, has received abundant proof 
through the popularity of the "reform" schools, which 



332 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

are further recommended for the sound pedagogical 
reason that they permit further concentration on fewer 
subjects and consequently less splitting up of the pupil's 
time than is allowable in the older system. By 1910 
fully 20 per cent of the German secondary schools were 
conducted according to the "Frankfort" or the "Altona 
plan" or some minor variation of them ; and despite the 
opposition of the Gymnasia, which see their peculiar 
institution threatened by this commingling, the "reform" 
movement has apparently won the day and marked the 
route upon which future reforms in secondary education 
must travel. No less interesting was the very popular 
experiment made in Berlin with the curricula of the 
Realschulen, which by delaying the commencement of a 
modern language until the third year makes it possible 
for the student to attend the Volksschule for five years 
before he enters on the higher school. By 1913 the num- 
ber of these schools had increased to 13. The success and 
popularity of this arrangement is encouraging because 
it marks a trend toward greater democracy in the schools.^ 
Enough has been said to show that the battle of the 
centuries between ancient and modern culture is still 
waging in Germany. However, the breaking of the 
gymnasial monopoly in 1900 and the rapid multiplica- 
tion of the modern municipal Realschulen under the 
drive of modern business has put the venerable human- 
istic institutions more and more into a defensive attitude. 
A similar movement has been noticeable in the growth 
of the technical universities, which have gradually won 
their way to equality with the time-honored academies 

^ A further evidence of the drift towards democracy is the increased 
interest in the " union school," which formed one of the subjects of dis- 
cussion at the Deutscher Lehrertag at Kiel in 1914. This Einheitsschule, 
which should unite the children of all classes until the age of 12, was a 
dream of the liberals of 1848. It has been successfully experimented with 
in Hamburg and other places, but finds no favor with the Prussian au- 
thorities. In Prussia, however, many of the cities have scholarships, 
which permit the transfer of bright pupils from the Volksschule at an 
early age to " free places " in the secondary schools. 



CONSERVATISM AND PROGRESS IN EDUCATION 333 

of higher learning that have been Germany's glory for 
centuries. There are now eleven of these technical 
institutions of university rank in Germany, most of 
them founded in the first half of the nineteenth century 
as vocational schools and advanced through the addi- 
tion of various departments after the middle of the 
century to the rank of polytechnic academies. Half a 
century ago the universities might have absorbed these 
institutions as technical departments, but academic 
conservatism stood in the way. Since that time they 
have seen their younger technical sisters gradually fight 
their way to university rank in spite of the opposition 
and contempt, of the older humanistic institutions, until 
finally in 1899 the Emperor conferred the right of grant- 
ing the degree of "doctor of technical science" upon the 
Technical University at Charlottenburg and thereby 
set the stamp of equality with the university. 

These polytechnic institutions march at the head of 
the whole system of technical and industrial education 
in Germany. Their students must have pursued a 
nine-year course in the secondary schools; their grad- 
uates become inventors, engineers, superintendents and 
heads of larger industrial enterprises. They are expected 
not only to lead along the old ways of technical science, 
but also to mark out new ones, for the creative spirit 
which has been the glory of German advanced scholar- 
ship everywhere marks them also. Next below them in 
the training of the army of technical students are institu- 
tions, like the Royal Industrial Academy (Gewerbe Aka- 
demie) at Chemnitz in Saxony, with departments of 
mechanics, chemistry and architecture, which require 
for admission a six-years course in the secondary school. 
These bridge over the gap between the technical uni- 
versities and the great group of intermediate industrial 
schools. The latter are practically all vocational in 
character. Their students have had a course in the 
Volksschule followed by a course in an elementary indus- 



334 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

trial school or a continuation school; their graduates 
become the officers of larger factories and the superin- 
tendents of smaller shops and are known as " technicians." 
Upon these intermediate schools follow the lower voca- 
tional schools, whose students have completed the Volks- 
schule, with additional work in mathematics and drawing. 
They have also usually entered upon an apprenticeship 
in the branch which the school teaches. The training 
in these elementary vocational schools sticks close to the 
practical side of the trade, and lasts sometimes for 
months, more usually, with interruptions, for years. 
From some of them come the foremen in large factories 
or the managers of small undertakings. Others succeed 
only in preparing well-trained machinists, engineers or 
electricians. 

To these schools, all of which are day institutions 
requiring almost the whole time of the student, is to be 
added a fourth group — the continuation schools. The 
continuation school system, largely a creation of the 
industrial and commercial demands of Germany since 
the eighties, is regarded with justice as a triumph of 
German pedagogy. It has, however, grown so fast, 
keeping pace with the empire's rapid industrial advance, 
that legislation has not been able to keep up with it. 
In many of the states no attempt has yet been made 
to bring the continuation schools under state control. 
The Prussian government brought in a bill in the Land- 
tag in 1 91 3 for state regulation, but it soon got into diffi- 
culties through the injection of confessional and political 
or semi-political questions. In the largest state, which 
is accustomed to lead in matters of education as in other 
things, the continuation school has as yet been left en- 
tirely to the individual communities, the state con- 
tributing to the schools only when education is made 
compulsory. In most Prussian communities attendance 
is compulsory for three years after the completion of 
the Volksschule. In Saxony boys must attend three 



CONSERVATISM AND PROGRESS IN EDUCATION 335 

years, girls two; in Bavaria both sexes must attend 
three years. These schools are a remarkable testi- 
monial to the industry and ambition of German youth, 
who give up their Sunday mornings and week-day 
evenings to study, for as a rule instruction extends from 
eight to ten hours per week. A number of the con- 
tinuation schools have a general character and include 
German, drawing, some mathematics and a Httle law 
and history ; but the better ones are vocational schools, 
preparing directly for some trade or business, and as is 
to be expected, the better and more enthusiastic class 
of students attend these. The continuation scheme in- 
cludes in the larger cities an intricate system of schools 
for the widest variety of vocations, from machine-build- 
ing, textile work and horology to blacksmithing and 
barbering. It draws into its widespread net boys and 
girls of fourteen to eighteen and older from almost 
every hamlet in the Fatherland. It is the graduate and 
professional continuation of the Volksschule and takes 
care that the young German worker does not waste his,, 
evenings and Sunday mornings, but invests them as 
interest-bearing capital for the nation's commerce and 
industry. 



CHAPTER XVI 

State and Church in the Schools 

Even so rapid a survey of Germany's educational 
system as that in the preceding chapter must give an 
idea of the vastness and intricacy of it. Next to the 
military system, which it resembles and with which it 
interlocks in so striking a fashion, it lies closer to the 
heart of the German lawgiver than any other institution 
of the state. "Whoever controls the schools, controls 
the future," is an adage which the Germans have at all 
times taken very much to heart, and never so much as in 
recent years, when the rise of Socialism and atheism have 
threatened the existence of society as now constituted. 
In both the school conferences called by William II, 
in 1890 and 1900, which were attended by such important 
results, especially for secondary education, the national 
task of the school was strongly emphasized; and the 
bearing of the educational system on the future of both 
church and state has been the subject of frequent dis- 
cussion in all the state parliaments. 

" The community supports education, the state controls 
it," is a maxim to which the German governments cling 
tenaciously. In practically all of the states a sharp 
control is exercised by the government authorities over 
the establishment of new schools, the erection of school 
buildings and the appointment and pay of teachers, 
while the expense of elementary education in greater 
part and of secondary education in part, is borne by 
the individual communities. In Prussia school affairs 
are administered jointly with medical and religious 
matters by one ministry. This department, through 

336 



STATE AND CHURCH IN THE SCHOOLS 337 

the provincial school boards, under the chairmanship 
of the provincial president or his representative, brings 
all of the schools in direct dependency on the crown. 
The provincial school boards are composed of trained 
schoolmen, selected for their efficiency and naturally 
also for their tried loyalty to the government ; and the 
oversight of all elementary and secondary education in 
the province falls under their control. On their recom- 
mendation the department of education fixes the course 
of study, determines the salary and pensions of the 
teachers, controls the examinations for teachers and 
pupils, and in many cases appoints the teachers or 
confirms their appointment by the local school boards. 
Under these provincial boards the elementary schools 
are regularly inspected by district inspectors, of whom 
about 30 per cent (1910) give all of their time to school 
affairs. The other 70 per cent are chosen mainly from 
the clergy, who also play a considerable role as district 
inspectors in the states outside of Prussia. The Volks- 
schulen are further subject to a local inspection, which 
in Prussia and most of the other states is largely in the 
hands of the local clergy, a state of affairs that will come 
up for further discussion below. In Prussia particularly 
the teachers in the primary schools look forward eagerly 
to the time when the schools shall be freed from local 
inspectors and when district supervision shall not be in 
the hands so largely of jurists and clergy, but, as is al- 
ready the case in certain of the smaller German states, 
of trained professional schoolmen. Every move in this 
direction, however, is bitterly opposed by the Centre 
and Conservative parties, who look upon the church as 
the mother of the schools and regard any spread of the 
system of professional district inspection as a blow at 
clerical influence. In the smaller states, where reli- 
gious differences do not play so large a part as in 
Prussia and Bavaria, state control of the schools is 
more direct and thorough. 



SS^ THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

The state, therefore, through a strongly centralized 
administration controls the schools in their organization 
and activity. The community pays the bills for some- 
what under 70 per cent of the German elementary school 
system, and through the local school board exercises a 
legislative and advisory voice in all that concerns the outer 
welfare of the schools. The board is variously organ- 
ized in the various states; but its make-up is essen- 
tially the same everywhere. Whether in city or country, 
it includes the representatives of the local administration, 
certain teachers or school principals, the local clergy of the 
three recognized faiths (evangelical, Roman Catholic and 
Jewish) and representative citizens from the local legis- 
lative body. This school committee provides the money 
for the support of the schools and in some cases selects 
teachers from eligible lists prepared by the department 
of education. In everything, including the pay and 
pension of teachers and the plans for new buildings, it 
must conform to the provisions of the state authorities. 
With the inner administration of the schools it has nothing 
to do, its members in most places not even having the 
right to attend classes or inspect in any way the work of 
the schools. In Prussia the state provides a large part 
of the pensions and backs up the weaker communities 
financially in the maintenance of the schools and the 
building of new ones, especially in those districts of the 
eastern marches where the work of the schools in the 
Germanization of the Poles is of such importance. In 
fact, state aid is an important item and one on which 
the Volksschulen in the poorer communities throughout 
all Germany count. In 1906 the share of the states' 
contributions, not including the education of teachers 
and inspection, summed up 29 per cent of the total 
cost of the elementary schools for the empire. 

Of secondary schools a considerable part are through- 
out Germany state affairs. These state Gymnasia are 
usually old foundations, for in recent years the govern- 



STATE AND CHURCH IN THE SCHOOLS 339 

ment authorities in the larger German states have 
closely restricted the opening of new state secondary- 
schools. With Bismarck's warning against an "edu- 
cated proletariat" ringing in their ears, conservative 
lawmakers and government oihcials have been very- 
unwilling to increase the schools that prepare for learned 
careers. "The attendance on the university far exceeds 
the demand," declared a leader of the Conservative 
"Imperial Party" in the Prussian Landtag in 191 2. 
" By this means there has arisen an educated proletariat 
which is a danger to the state. It is from among such 
men, whose careers are wrecked, that the Social Demo- 
crats draw their best strength. Every increase in 
university attendance must increase this danger." It 
is indeed not solely for political reasons that objection 
is made to the multipHcation of candidates for the 
learned professions. Germany certainly needs business 
men and farmers, technicians and handworkers, and 
not more lawyers, physicians and philologians, whom 
the ambition for the social prestige that comes with a 
learned title and calling rather than any sympathy 
with their life's work is driving into overcrowded pro- 
fessions. However, the refusal of the state govern- 
ments to found new schools has spurred the pride of 
the rapidly growing cities to open on their own account 
a number of secondary schools, which often outstrip 
the older and more dignified state institutions in their 
equipment and salary Hst. Thus while in Bavaria 
all of the secondary schools are state institutions, in 
Prussia a great number of them are ci-vic and in Saxony 
almost all are municipal foundations. The older state 
institutions, some of which trace their history from the 
sixteenth century, claim a certain prestige of age and 
tradition that even the splendid equipment of the new 
city schools has not yet greatly diminished. Of the 
Gymnasia in Prussia, two-fifths are now city affairs, 
while practically all the Realgymnasia and Realschulen 



340 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

are municipal foundations. The six-year Realschule, 
indeed, with its emphasis of modern culture and a more 
practical education, is the most distinguished contribu- 
tion of the city spirit to intellectual Germany. The 
city must of course obtain governmental approval 
before a new school is founded, and while this is given 
readily enough where a real need exists, it is subject 
to the fulfilment of every state requirement as to build- 
ings and equipment. In these respects, indeed, the 
municipahty usually goes much farther than the re- 
quirements, for nowhere have the growing wealth of 
the cities and their strong civic pride shown themselves 
more splendidly than in their magnificent school build- 
ings and the generous provision in equipment and in pay 
to the teachers. In this regard they have set far too fast 
a pace for the older state institutions. 

These evidences of the modem spirit in the schools 
are a noteworthy sign of the growth of democracy in 
the German cities. It is the lack of democracy in the 
state's attitude toward the schools that forms the chief 
burden of complaint among German teachers. State 
control is in most ways very beneficial. It normalizes 
the schools and organizes them under a central control, 
which puts highly trained men in charge and insures 
the appointment of the best teachers available. It 
provides a system of supervision which, so far as it is 
done by professionally trained inspectors, guarantees 
the proper performance of duty, without fear of local 
influences, by every functionary from the principal 
down to the last, substitute. As a result, the whole 
system, from the East Prussian one-class Volksschule 
up to the venerable monastery-like Schul-Pforta near 
Naumburg, is characterized by German method, thor- 
oughness and conscientious performance of duty. On 
the other hand, it is due to state supervision that the 
same barriers against democracy are maintained in the 
schools as in the poHtical life of Prussia and other Ger- 



STATE AND CHURCH IN THE SCHOOLS 341 

man states. It is due to reactionary forces working 
in parliament and ministry that distinctions of class 
still prevent the logical articulation of primary educa- 
tion into secondary education. As we have seen, the 
schools are not organically built up. The Volksschule 
is for the masses which are cut off from the social and 
intellectual ehte of the nation in even the earhest years 
of school life. This essentially undemocratic character 
of the schools is bitterly assailed by the teachers of the 
Volksschule, but there are at present few signs of a 
change. 

It is natural also that progressive teachers, whether 
of elementary or secondary schools, should demand a 
larger share of at least an advisory sort in the conduct 
of the schools. In 191 1 Baden, one of the most pro- 
gressive of the German states in the direction of popular 
government, founded a school council (Landesschulrat) , 
composed of members of the ministry and professional 
schoolmen, whose business it is to oversee the schools 
and advise the ministry as to their administration. 
Something like this is especially desired in the larger 
states, where the ideal of many teachers is the creation of 
school ''synods," elective like the church synods from 
citizens and school experts, so that the school interests 
of each district and province and of the state itself may 
be cared for by an elective body, consisting in part of 
"laymen" and in part of trained teachers. Such 
bodies, the champions of this system contend, would 
without interfering in any way with the admirable sides 
of the state's inspection and control, administer the 
affairs of the schools in a much more homogeneous and 
democratic manner than is possible imder the present 
highly diversified system. However, such a imified 
scheme finds strenuous opposition among those who 
believe that the very variety of the Prussian school 
organization is necessary and secures better results in 
view of the wide differences in population and spirit 



342 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

between the feudal East, the patriarchal North and 
the industrial West of the kingdom. 

In this effort of the teachers to increase their influence 
on the school administration there is another evidence 
of the rise of professional pride among a class which 
has, after many struggles, at last won for itself a recog- 
nized place in the state bureaucracy, second only to 
that of the army and those higher officials who owe 
their position to early financial and social advantages. 
With this growth of professional pride there has spread 
among the schools in the development of the new em- 
pire a spirit of militarism which, especially after the 
beginning of the new century, quite took possession of 
the secondary schools. This spirit has shown itself 
throughout the empire, but finds, like other things 
military, its most striking form in Prussia. The Prus- 
sian schoolmaster is like the Prussian in general by 
nature and training a soldier, and the Prussian school- 
boy falls in unresistingly with the spirit of rigid discipline 
and unwavering obedience that has been so characteristic 
of his native land since the days of Frederick William I 
and has become so characteristic of Germany under 
Prussian hegemony. The procession of children who 
follow their teacher on an afternoon excursion through 
the suburbs of Berhn or Hanover is a vivid illustration 
of the military spirit. Two and two they march, with 
unbroken step, halting at a crowded corner in obedience 
to a wave of the teacher's hand or deploying into the 
fields at their marshal's signal, — no dodging under 
trolley cars or staring into store windows or other acts 
of insubordination so inseparable from schoolboydom 
elsewhere. More striking still is the spirit of militarism 
in the secondary schools, where the glory that was 
Greece and the grandeur that was Rome have been 
taught with an ever increasing tendency to Prussian 
Schneid. Many of the secondary school-teachers are 
officers in the reserve forces or the Landsturm, an in- 



STATE AND CHURCH IN THE SCHOOLS 343 

vasion of the temple of Minerva by the spirit of Mars 
which has been encouraged by the higher school authori- 
ties. It means that the spirit of high personal honor 
and devotion to the Fatherland is coupled with a control 
of men and a demeanor toward the students that sets 
perfect discipline and high national patriotism above 
every other consideration. It is but natural that such 
men should take as their model the officers' class, 
socially so much superior to that of the teacher, and 
that they should bring into the schools, along with 
high national ideals, a further deepening of the caste 
spirit. 

This spirit of caste is, as we have seen, still further 
encouraged by the fact that the secondary school student 
is the possessor of a special class privilege, the one-year 
mihtary service. It is a privilege which brings con- 
siderable cost upon the family of the student, for while 
the Volksschule is practically free in Prussia and attended 
by so small a cost in the other states as to be a burden 
to no parent, in the secondary schools the tuition cost 
averages twenty to twenty-five dollars annually, and 
even if he study no further after the service examination 
(Abschlusspriifung) has secured him his privilege of 
one-year service, the "volunteer" soldier has to bear 
the expense of his equipment and board during his year 
of service. In return, the "volunteer" has certain 
much-coveted rights, such as the privilege of living 
outside the barracks, the freedom from certain menial 
duties, the postponement of service four years later 
than the conscript and the right of choice as to the 
arm of the service he wishes to enter. More important 
still, he may advance to subordinate office during his 
service, and later, if he is capable, be commissioned 
as an officer of the reserve forces, with the social pres- 
tige thereto attached. The "one-year privilege" is 
closely watched over by the Imperial School Commis- 
sion, and the entry of incompetents among the "vol- 



344 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

unteers" is barred by a rigid examination, rigidly ad- 
ministered. The privileges accorded to the "one-year 
volunteers" make of these young men, who constitute 
about 3 per cent of the total number enrolled under 
the imperial colors each year, a special class and intro- 
duce into the schools a spirit which the opponents of 
the system in Germany characterize as highly un- 
democratic. We have seen that the social privileges 
attaching to this arrangement bring into the secondary 
schools numbers of young men who would best serve 
the Fatherland by preparing for trade or commerce, 
and that indirectly through its working, numbers 
tend to crowd into the universities and later overcrowd 
the professions. 

The growth of the military spirit in the schools has 
been strongly encouraged by the state. "I am looking 
for soldiers," declared the Emperor in 1890 in calling 
together the conference which resulted in the increase 
of Realschulen. That the militarizing of the schools 
has been of immense advantage to the army as a ma- 
chine of offense and defense has been abundantly proved 
by the history of the great war. That this govern- 
mental encouragement of militarism in the schools has 
gone hand in hand with the discouragement of liberal 
tendencies is the burden of lament of Radical and Social- 
ist papers whenever the school question has come up 
for discussion. In 1890 the Emperor charged that the 
schools were not adequately performing their duty in 
combating the spread of Socialist propaganda, and the 
same charge is constantly repeated in the Conservative 
press and in parliament. "We are now in the midst of 
a struggle about the conditions of life," declared the 
Conservative representative Heckenroth in the Reichstag 
in 191 2. "In this struggle we demand that the teachers 
stand on the side of Christians and patriots, and that 
they make the children pious, God-fearing and strong 
in faith, so that the young people may give to God 



STATE AND CHURCH IN THE SCHOOLS 345 

what is God's and also hold faith to their earthly ruler. 
This is our ideal of school and education." 

This ideal is that of the Prussian ministry as well as 
of Clerical and Conservative circles ; and especially in 
Prussia, Bavaria and Saxony teachers to whom a sus- 
picion of radical tendencies attaches are apt to feel 
the weight of governmental displeasure. The with- 
holding of promotion, pubHc censure, suspension and 
even removal from oj6&ce are weapons which may be 
brought into play against any teacher whom the govern- 
ment officials suspect of a share in Radical or Socialist 
propaganda. Naturally these things show themselves 
more in Prussia than elsewhere, and most of all in the 
Prussian East, where the elementary schools are es- 
pecially exposed to reactionary influences. Occasion- 
ally, if the Radical newspapers are to be believed, the 
ofl&cials go even farther in their effort to make the 
teachers do positive work for the government cause in 
a close election, in such cases the district inspectors 
being the agents of communication. Thus in the Reichs- 
tag election of 191 2 the attention of the teachers in an 
East Prussian district was called to the coming election, 
and when the Social Democratic candidate was finally 
successful, one of the primary teachers was given five 
days in which to make report as to why he had not 
voted. The attitude of the Conservative ministry in 
such a case has been this : The Socialist is an enemy 
to the state and no person can be tolerated in the state's 
service who in any way gives the party of revolution 
aid or encouragement. Like the soldier and the employee 
of the postal, telegraph or customs service, the teacher 
is expected to stand by the government through thick 
and thin. 

Such instances of direct interference in the personal 
liberties of teachers have been rare, for the latter are 
as a class both by nature and training faithful servants 
of the state. Intense pride in the greatness of united 



346 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

/ 

Germany and a patriotic devotion to the Fatheriand 
are nowhere stronger than among teachers, the success 
of whose work was splendidly apparent in the oneness of 
Germany's response to the call to the colors in July 
and August, 1914. That the old separatism and jeal- 

/ ousy of the petty states have given way to a broad 
enthusiasm for the German Fatherland, one and in- 
divisible, is largely due to the devoted teacher whose 
obscure and ill-rewarded work has nowhere borne richer 
fruit than in instilling into the present generation the 
ideal of German unity and Germany's world power. 
It is unfortunate that this devotion to the Fatherland 

/ and reverence for the monarchy may be misused by a 
reactionary ministry, which represents the success of 
governmental policy as one and the same with the 
salvation of the country. The fact that cases of in- 
fringement on the Hberties of the teacher do occur tends 
to have two unfortunate results, which in Prussia at 
least must be set off against the successful sides of the 
school system. Either the teacher, with the sturdy in- 
dependence and love of liberty which are basic traits 
in German character, is driven into a feeling of sullen 
discontent that manifests itself in a vote "to the Left" 
whenever possible; or being of more pliable sort, he 
crooks the pregnant hinges of the knee and develops a 
serviHty toward those in high places which is an un- 
attractive reverse to officialdom in Prussia and else- 
where in Germany. Besides the great majority of men 
in high official positions who have won for the German 
school system its unrivalled place in the world, there 
are not a few school principals and higher officers who 
are petty tyrants to those under them and models of 
pliant sycophancy toward everything that comes from 
above. 

Such manifestations of the bureaucratic spirit, how- 
ever, leave the great majority of German teachers, 
both secondary and elementary, untroubled, and they 



STATE AND CHURCH IN THE SCHOOLS 347 

go ahead weaving their part in the web of Germany's 
greatness. Of far greater importance to the primary 
teacher is the system which tends to exclude him from 
the higher positions in the educational system. The 
secondary school-teacher, who is without exception 
university-trained, may advance by the stages of school 
principal and inspector to the highest administrative 
positions in the educational department, or if his cir- 
cumstances permit further study, may become a uni- 
versity professor. Not so with the teacher in the Volks- 
schule. If he is the graduate of a Burgerschule or has 
had other opportunities, he may become principal of 
an elementary school. In Saxony, Hesse and Weimar 
he may study from four to six semesters at the university 
in preparation for a "pedagogical certificate," which 
opens the way to higher positions in the school adminis- 
tration, but not to a secondary school position. It is a 
sign of progress that many of the universities have 
introduced courses especially designed for teachers in 
the Volksschule both during vacation and term time. 
It cannot be long ere Prussia also joins in this forward 
movement, which while retaining the elementary teachers 
in the elementary school system, nevertheless opens to 
them fields of wider activity; but for the present the 
Prussian universities are closed to elementary teachers 
as regularly matriculated students. The only way in 
which they can enter is by passing the regular gradu- 
ation examination of a secondary school of nine-year 
course. It was mainly of the Prussian system that Pro- 
fessor J. Tews, a radical school reformer of Berlin, was 
speaking when he lamented at the national teachers' 
convention in 191 2 : "While other states are developing 
their institutions of youth, the German Volksschule re- 
mains narrowed by church control and social restrictions, 
the teacher a servant of the church ; and in order to pre- 
serve these relations, the coming army of teachers is 
shut out from the sources of knowledge."/ 



348 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

"A servant of the church !" This expression suggests 
a side of the pubHc school system of Germany which is 
most difl&cult for an American to understand, — the 
side of church control. In the first place, it must be 
called to mind that in Germany, as in most of the Euro- 
pean states, church and state are still united with a 
thousand inter twinings. As the result of a struggle, 
lasting with interruptions since the days of the Salic 
emperors and by no means ended, an arrangement has 
been reached in all of the states of the German empire 
by which the supreme authority of the state is acknowl- 
edged in all that relates to the temporal welfare of its 
citizens ; but as has been shown in Chapter X there 
is still considerable doubt as to the line dividing tem- 
poral from spiritual interests. Full liberty of conscience 
is guaranteed in all of the German states, nevertheless 
religion is estabUshed, that is, the state still cares for 
the material welfare of the three approved churches, 
and the clergy — evangelical, Roman Catholic and 
Jewish — are theoretically public oflS.cers. In case of 
the Roman Catholic clergy, the state imposes con- 
ditions for their education and exercises an oversight 
over the seminaries and lyceums to see that these 
conditions are fulfilled. The bishops, and in some 
states the individual priests, must take an oath of 
allegiance to the state authority before they can assume 
spiritual office. The evangelical church in Prussia, 
Saxony and other Protestant states is still more closely 
interlocked with the state, the ruler being in theory 
the supreme bishop of the church, while the state con- 
trols completely the education of the clergy, appoints 
or confirms all higher church officials and guarantees 
the support of the church from a special tax, which in 
Berlin has averaged as high as 20 per cent of the total 
income tax. While, as has been stated, full liberty of 
worship is guaranteed to every one, the tax officials 
follow up with great zeal the collection of the church 



STATE AND CHURCH IN THE SCHOOLS 349 

tax even from foreigners temporarily resident in Ger- 
many, and in Prussia it is necessary that those who 
would avoid paying it should formally and legally de- 
clare their separation from the church. More than 
one American and Enghshman staying in Berlin or 
other Prussian cities has been astonished at having to 
undergo a rigid cross examination by the tax police 
as to his religious faith, and even certificates of baptism 
may be required as collateral evidence from those who 
would escape the church tax. 

The fact is, that the average German looks upon his 
religion as being as much a matter of pubHc concern as 
his nationahty, and feels no resentment in being tagged 
as Protestant, CathoHc, Jew or Dissenter as pubhcly 
as he is classified as merchant, farmer or official. It is 
but natural, therefore, that he should look upon religion 
as an essential part of his child's training, to be under- 
taken and watched over by the state as much as train- 
ing in algebra or history. The oft-repeated claim of the 
Clericals and Conservatives that "the church is the 
mother of the school" surely finds historical justification, 
for ever since the Protestant Reformation put education 
in Protestant Germany into secular hands, the church 
has watched closely to see that Luther's maxim be 
carried out : "Let the chief est and most general subject 
of study be the Holy Scriptures." In fact, one may 
say that the whole history of education in Germany 
since the Renaissance has been one long-continued 
effort to free the universities and schools from the wor- 
ship of barren ideals of the past on the one side and 
from jealous guardianship of the church on the other. 

That this struggle to completely secularize scholarship 
was won first in the universities is natural, for there the 
more enlightened spirits gather. Since the day when 
Frederick the Great confirmed the doctrine of freedom 
of instruction {Lehrfreiheit) , the German professor has 
studied and taught in an atmosphere almost chemically 



350 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

clean of ecclesiastical control. Again and again attacks 
have been made upon this freedom of scholarship ; and 
here and there a Roman Catholic bishop has ordered a 
boycott on the lectures of some Hberal historian or 
philosopher in Bavaria, or the Prussian church consis- 
tories have shown themselves overzealous in getting 
an ultra-orthodox apologist into a theological chair at 
Gottingen or Rostock or Halle; but such action has 
always provoked a widespread and spirited protest 
from intellectual circles, and the state authorities have 
been well-nigh unwavering in defending those accused 
of dangerous heresies. PubHc opinion insists that the 
universities shall guarantee a freedom of investigation 
and instruction in the field of rehgion as absolute and 
unconditional as in physics or biology. 

This freedom, however, applies only to the universities. 
The mind of the g5minasium upper-classman is held to 
be still too immature to entertain heterodox ideas, and 
all religious teaching in the primary and secondary 
schools is strictly confessional. In fact, the principle of 
religious teaching in the schools is closely bound up with 
another principle, recognized throughout the greater 
part of Germany, that of the uniconfessional school. 
That the school should be organized according to the 
religious faith of a majority of its pupils and tagged as 
evangelical, Roman CathoHc or Jewish, is a principle 
that is rigorously carried out through almost the whole 
of the empire.^ Nor is this spKtting up into sects so 
inconvenient for the school system as might be im- 
agined, in view of the fact that confessional lines in 
Germany are unfortunately also usually geographical 
lines. As we have seen, the valleys of the Rhine, the 
Main and the Danube are in the main Roman CathoKc ; 
the northern and eastern plain, except the PoHsh prov- 
inces, with the highlands of the centre and in part of 

^The exceptions are Baden, the Grand Duchy of Hesse, Saxe- 
Meiningen, Saxe- Weimar and the city of Hamburg. 



STATE AND CHURCH IN THE SCHOOLS 351 

the Southwest, largely Protestant. The dividing lines 
which make a community overwhelmingly Protestant 
or Roman Catholic have determined historically the 
confessional character of a great majority of the second- 
ary schools, and in the older Gymnasia the principal 
and a majority of the teachers are evangeHcal or CathoHc 
as a result of traditions which run clear back to the 
Reformation. Owing to various causes, the interest 
of the Roman CathoHc population in secondary educa- 
tion is proportionately less than that of the Protestant ; 
as a result we find that in the larger cities, where since 
1890 many Realschulen have sprung up, there is usually 
one Roman CathoKc secondary school and sometimes a 
Jewish institution, while the others are Protestant. In 
such cases no constraint is exercised to force parents 
to send their children to a school of a certain confession, 
and in the smaller places the school usually contains a 
respectable minority of evangelicals or CathoHcs, as 
the case may be. If the mmiber of pupils belonging to 
the minority is large enough, classes in rehgion are formed 
for their instruction by one of their own faith; if not, 
they are sent to some other school, or even to approved 
private instructors for their work in rehgion. 

In the Gymnasia and Realschulen, where an atmosphere 
of higher scholarship reigns, confessional differences are 
of small importance. In the great mass of the Volks- 
schulen, however, they are of the greatest weight, and 
may have a direct effect upon the efficiency of the school. 
Thus the Prussian law of 1906 authorizes the formation 
of a new school in a city of over five thousand inhabit- 
ants if there are 120 children, or in a rural community 
60 children, of a confession different from that of the 
existing school. The result is sometimes the organiza- 
tion of a one-class or two-class school besides a highly 
efficient school of eight classes. 

While there is Httle objection among German school- 
men and poHtical thinkers to the teaching of rehgion 



352 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

in the schools, there is considerable opposition to the 
spHtting up of the school children on confessional lines. 
Baden, Hesse and several of the smaller states do not 
favor the uniconfessional school, but train their chil- 
dren in so-called "Simultan^^ or "Paritdtic^' schools, 
where the confession of the teachers follows the con- 
fessional percentage of the state. In the Grand Duchy 
of Hesse over 90 per cent of the children attend these 
schools. In Prussia their introduction meets with the 
determined opposition of the Conservative and Clerical 
parties, and they make up only 2.28 per cent of the total 
number of elementary schools, being found especially in 
the eastern marches, where the political and economic 
situation make them especially advisable, and in the 
district around Wiesbaden, where Prussia received 
them as a tradition. In Bavaria official opposition to 
them is no less intense than in the great kingdom to 
the north; but it has often been noted by schoolmen 
that the confessionless schools are very popular among 
school patrons in the southern kingdom. In Munich 
the number of children applying annually to the few 
SimuUan schools is far in excess of the vacancies. Not- 
withstanding this, the principle of the confessional 
school finds opposition only in Socialist and Radical 
circles. How far Conservative and Clerical leaders 
go in the opposite direction is shown by the fact that 
demand is frequently made on the school authorities 
to divide the Hilfsschulen, that is, those for defective 
classes and even those for tubercular children, accord- 
ing to confession; and that a similar demand in the 
case of the continuation schools, together with a de- 
mand that religious instruction be made obligatory 
in their program, is one of the chief causes which has 
thus far prevented the passage of a law bringing this 
class of schools under state control in Prussia. 

In Prussia, as elsewhere in Germany, the confessional 
school is a compromise. It is a compromise which the 



STATE AND CHURCH IN THE SCHOOLS 353 

great majority of Prussian patriots, with memories of 
the KuUurkampf still in mind, are quite wilKng to 
endure. They are satisfied with the principle, firmly 
maintained during that struggle, that the schools shall be 
under the control of the state, and point a warning 
finger at America, where the public schools do not in- 
clude, in the earlier years at least, a considerable per- 
centage of Roman Catholic children. At present while 
over 37 per cent of the registered school children in 
Prussia are Roman CathoKc, under 30 per cent of the 
schools belong to this confession, proof enough that 
the minority is already making considerable concessions 
in school attendance. Whether, as is contended, the 
gradual increase of Simultan schools would lead to the 
formation of a separate Roman Catholic school system, 
which uiider the present law could not be prevented, 
is a matter on which one can have his own views. Thus 
far opinion seems overwhelming that Prussia does better 
to retain the present confessional school with all its 
drawbacks than to run the risk of losing from the state's 
schools a large percentage of Roman Catholic children 
and driving in still farther the wedge between the 
confessions. 

Whether in confessional school or not, the teaching 
of religion in the school itself is regarded as a matter 
of course, and beyond a few Radicals and the Social 
Democrats and a few schoolmen who have progressed 
far beyond their fellows, there is no sentiment in favor 
of abolishing it. In practically all of the German states 
it occupies the first place on the school program, where 
it is given the choice hour, the first one in the morning, 
from three to four hours per week in the Volksschule 
and from two to three in the secondary schools. In 
the latter religious teaching falls into the hands of in- 
structors who have elected the subject along with 
other, usually humanistic, subjects for their academic 
preparation. There is frequently a sharp collision be- 



354 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

tween the individual conscience of the teacher and the 
orthodox material which he is required to impart. The 
teacher is always a university man, brought up in the 
searching scientific methods which provoke criticism 
and doubt; he is face to face with immature youth, 
to whom he must teach the Bible, the catechism, the 
doctrines of the faith and some church history and 
patristic literature, with the use of text-books and 
readers approved by the church authorities, under the 
inspection of the senior among the local clergy. The 
result is frequently a collision between the individual 
conscience of the teacher and the demands of his career, 
leading to such experiences as Max Dreyer, himself 
formerly a secondary school-teacher, mirrored in 1899 
in somewhat exaggerated form in his play Der Probe- 
kandidat. To a man of earnest personal rehgious con- 
victions the situation offers a fascinating opportunity; 
but to the German secondary school-teacher, whose at- 
titude toward religion has of recent years grown to be a 
more and more formal one, the temptation to treat 
reHgion in the formal way in which other academic 
subjects are treated is usually too strong to be resisted. 
If he has strong religious convictions, they are usually 
other than those contained in catechism and church 
exegesis, and he must say to himself, as Mephistopheles 
to Faust : 

" The best thou leamest, in the end, 
Thou dar'st not tell the yoimgsters — never! " 

The alternative of purely formal treatment is all too 
easy. The subject-matter of faith becomes a corpus 
vile for the exercise of memory and the powers of con- 
centration. To most secondary school students the 
historic side of their rehgious study is interesting and 
the contents well mastered, but compulsory study of 
reHgion is a failure as promoting personal rehgious im- 
pressions at this impressionable age. The Prussian 



STATE AND CHURCH IN THE SCHOOLS 355 

ministry of education has persistently sought to pre- 
vent the classes in religion from becoming simply formal 
by emphasizing the importance of intrusting this work 
only to men of high character and personal attractive- 
ness. But teachers of such sort are rare anywhere, and 
the net result is that most boys go through the pliant 
years of adolescence with little religious experience and 
enter the university with the feehng that the hour in 
religion was a part of the school drudgery of which they 
are glad to be rid. The secondary school-teacher should 
not of course be held responsible for the rehgious in- 
differentism so characteristic of the intellectual classes 
in Germany since the eighties. When the time is ripe 
for a great revival in evangelical Germany, it is probable 
that the secondary schools will share abundantly in it 
and that the classes in rehgion will take on a new 
vitality. 

In tJie primary school the teaching of religion assumes 
an even more important position, for the reason that 
fewer concessions need to be made to the struggle be- 
tween the scientific spirit and religious faith. Practically 
every German state puts the moral and rehgious training 
of the child first among the requirements of the elemen- 
tary school. As stated on numerous occasions by the 
Prussian ministry, the object of the Prussian Volks- 
schule is "the religious, moral and patriotic culture of 
youth by means of education and instruction, as well 
as the introduction into such general knowledge and 
skill as is necessary for civil hfe." In carrying out this 
moral and religious purpose instruction in religion plays 
also an important part in the training of teachers. Of the 
137 seminaries for elementary teachers in Prussia (1902) 
only six were " Paritdtic'^ or not uniconf essional ; and 
every care is taken that the future teachers of the 
children of the people shall be well grounded in the- 
faith. The Prussian law of 1906 permits the formation 
of a new class in rehgion provided twelve pupils belong 



3S6 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

to a different faith from that prevailing in the school 
which they attend. This is going very far in admitting 
the religious rights of the minority ; but law and prac- 
tice never go so far as to permit any scholar to leave 
school without regular religious instruction. "Better 
religion poorly taught than none at all," they say, for 
to the average German citizen the French schools 
with their lack of all reHgious training are a horror. 

Religion and Fatherland then are the two pillars 
upon which German elementary instruction rests. 
Conservative circles, for whom throne and altar must 
stand or fall together, cannot conceive it possible that 
the great fabric of Germany's educational system could 
endure without being firmly braced on both supports. 
Radicals and Social Democrats, however, object to the 
collocation. Religion in the schools, they say, means 
too often narrow orthodoxy, and they cannot forget 
that since 1848 the forces of orthodoxy in Prussia have 
repeatedly been debased into tools for repressing the 
popular will. It is not merely that these radical poHtical 
thinkers look upon religion as a private matter with 
which the state has nothing to do ; they fear the effect 
of the class in religion in the hands of political reaction- 
aries. "As reHgion is now taught in the schools," 
they assert, " the effect is not to cultivate independence 
of thought, but to instil in the mind of the child the 
idea that to worship God and to honor the king are 
one and the same." The foundation of this feehng was 
laid in the Prussia of half a century ago, when the 
church became the handmaid of reaction, and ever 
since that time the evangelical church has been well- 
nigh without influence on liberal and democratic circles 
in Germany. The Roman Catholic church has, as we 
have seen, through the deep-going democratization of 
its priesthood and its readiness to oppose feudal in- 
fluences in the government, kept a stronger hold upon 
the masses. 



STATE AND CHURCH IN THE SCHOOLS 357 

This guardianship of the church over education shows 
itself in the control which the clergy actually exercise 
upon the conduct of the schools. In the secondary 
schools it goes only to the point of supervising reKgious 
instruction, a right guaranteed to the chief local clergy- 
man of each confession for the class in his own faith. 
This right of inspection is very loosely exercised and 
goes Kttle farther than the supervision of the text-books 
used, the results of the religious instruction being easily 
checked up when the pupil comes up for confirmation. 
In the Volksschule, however, the range of clerical inter- 
ference goes much farther and amounts in many rural 
districts of both North and South Germany to bringing 
the entire elementary school system under the church. 
In the larger places the local supervision of the schools 
falls of course into the trained hands of the school 
principal or a member of the municipal administrative 
board, and the clerical members of the school board 
simply oversee religious instruction ; but in the country 
districts in the two leading German monarchies, Prussia 
and Bavaria, the leading local clergyman is the regular 
local inspector. This condition of affairs is a constant 
thorn in the side of progressive teachers in the Volks- 
schule, who thus find themselves hampered by a super- 
vision which is in no sense professionally trained, and 
often at the mercy of an espionage which is narrow and 
intolerant. Ever since the Kulturkampf Prussian minis- 
ters have asserted the principle that the state has a right 
to appoint all local and district school inspectors ; never- 
theless, in practice not only the former but a considerable 
percentage of the latter are taken from the ranks of the 
clergy. The explanation is of course to be sought in 
the control of the legislative affairs of the kingdom by 
Conservative and Clerical forces. In Bavaria, where 
the Centre party has practically controlled legislation 
since 1869, the determination to keep the schools under 
ecclesiastical domination has been equally great. Here 



358 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO. WARS 

again, the more liberal southwestern states, Baden, 
Wiirtemberg and Hesse, and some of the smaller 
Thuringian states, have shown that it is possible to do 
away with clerical control without driving religion 
from the schools or lessening their moral power. 

The charge that the schools are unduly influenced 
by the church is an old one in Germany and is heard 
with ever increasing insistency. Progressive school- 
men and many patriots of no decidedly radical leanings 
yearn for the time when the entire inspection and con- 
trol of the schools shall be taken out of clerical hands 
and put into those of professionally trained schoolmen, 
such as now supervise the secondary schools in the 
empire and the elementary schools in the cities. How 
soon this state of affairs will be reached depends like 
other reforms in the school system upon political progress 
in Prussia and Bavaria, Thus far Conservative and 
Clerical opposition have blocked all efforts toward 
reform in the largest German states; and here again 
Prussia, which is accustomed to lead in the cultural as 
well as the material things of the nation, has fallen 
behind in the march of liberal ideas. 



CHAPTER XVII 

The Press and Public Opinion 

Since the day when the bankrupt Mayence genius 
invented movable types, Germany has with few inter- 
ruptions held the first place among printing and pub- 
lishing nations. Her annual output in books surpasses 
the combined production of France, England and the 
United States ; and even if we subtract pamphlets, 
which in German statistics are rated as books, and 
which bring into the world many things that appear in 
other countries in magazines, the Fatherland exceeds 
in its contribution to this "paper age" any two other 
nations. The explanation is to be found not merely 
in the high culture of the nation, but also in the method- 
ical spirit, which drives the German to analyze, corre- 
late and formulate, seeking not merely apostles for his 
patiently won ideas but often clearness for the writer 
through the very formulation of his ideas. In no land 
is access to the press so cheap and easy, in no land are 
the rewards for the author proportionately so large. 
Unfortunately also in no land are there so many worth- 
less books brought into the world, from the machine- 
made doctor dissertation with its pathetic testimony 
to years of youthful vigor wasted in counting the 
hairs in Homer's beard down to the penny manuals 
on "How to learn French in Three Weeks." The 
Germans pay the penalty of a nation which produces 
each year a mass of creative scholarly research with 
the by-products of boneless pedantry and speculative 
dilettanteism. 

359 



360 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

Besides the book press, the periodical press rolls up 
each month and each day its vast flood. Every science, 
art and industry, every branch of commerce, every po- 
litical fraction has its press; every handicraft, yes, 
almost every forceful personality in the country has its 
periodical exponent. The press directory of 19 13 men- 
tions II periodicals devoted to the continuation school 
system alone. The Schornsteinfeger, published monthly 
in Berlin, ministers to the Hterary needs of chimney 
sweeps; the AUgemeine deutsche Kdsehlatt to those of 
the cheese workers : a specialization in the printed 
representatives of Germany's multifarious industries 
confronts us as hairspHt and bewildering as in the in- 
dustrial branches themselves. Only indeed in a land 
where the division of industry and the organization of 
commerce are carried as far as in Germany could this 
vast array of trade periodicals live and flourish. 

On the other hand the number of popular periodicals 
deaHng with history, political science and geography is 
small : the Deutsche Rundschau, founded by the late 
Julius Rodenberg, the Suddeutsche Monatshefte and the 
Deutsche Revue are the only ones which deserve to be 
put beside half a dozen or more great British reviews. 
In the field of artistic and Uterary criticism there is 
none which in the variety and brilliance of its contents 
appeals to so large a public as the Revue des deux Mondes. 
Nor do the more popular Westermanns or Velhagen und 
Klasings Monatshefte, Nord und Sud or the time-honored 
Gartenlauhe attain to the vivid contemporary interest 
of a few of the best American illustrated magazines. 
The out-of-door element, so attractive a part of British 
and American magazines, has only recentty made its 
appearance in German periodicals and is to be found 
mainly in publications devoted to Alpine, automobile 
and aviation clubs or other special sports. If, how- 
ever, the German press has something less to offer 
to the leisure hours of the man of general culture than 



THE PRESS AND PUBLIC OPINION 361 

that of the western nations, to the specialist and scholar, 
whether he be a specialist in Sanscrit, stamp collecting 
or soap boiling, it brings each year a wealth of material 
which serves later on as a reservoir for the writers of 
other nations. 

The spirit of the German press is then that of German 
scholarship. It shows the same enthusiasm for truth, 
the same conscientiousness in the search for it and the 
same honesty in proclaiming it as have set their stamp 
on German scholarship everywhere. The reverse of 
this in pedantry of manner and boring tediousness of 
portrayal is not lacking. The daily press, to which this 
chapter is chiefly devoted, shows these characteristics 
in an even greater degree. The most popular child of 
the printing press, the newspaper, had also its birth in 
Germany, and so far as numbers are concerned, Germany 
is still above all its home. Exact statistics are lacking, 
but in 1908 the number of daily papers was estimated 
by competent authorities at four thousand, of which 
Dr. Robert Brunhuber,^ an expert in this field, counts 
about four hundred organs of considerable importance. 
Of these perhaps 35 are papers of great influence, of 
which over one-half appear in Berlin and less than half 
a dozen outside of Prussia. In the aggregate the Ger- 
man daily press rises then to tremendous figures. The 
post-office department acts as the agent of the press, 
receiving subscriptions at all offices and distributing 
the papers, and reckoning by post-office statistics, 
German observers set the distribution of papers in the 
year 1906 at between twelve and twenty million copies 
per day. This mighty flood, which pours itself daily 
over all parts of Germany, rippling to the most distant 
dune villages of the Baltic coast and the eeriest nests 
of the Bavarian highlands, flows most densely in the 
Rhine valley. Here the Cologne, Diisseldorf and Dort- 
mund papers find their way into every hamlet and in 

^ Das deutsche Zeitungswesen. 



362 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

the industrial centres into every house. In the Rhine 
Palatinate the average is one daily newspaper to every 
fifteen thousand inhabitants in the entire district. 

Through this great flood, from the Berlin and Frank- 
fort journals down to the provincial "General Anzeiger" 
("Official Gazette") is a long journey past all sorts of 
newspaper undertakings. Most of the larger papers 
maintain correspondence bureaus in the greater German 
cities, and the largest also in foreign capitals, but as 
in the case of other lands, by far the greater part of the 
news comes to them through press associations. The 
great German press association is Wolff's Telegraphic 
Bureau, which differs from international bureaus like 
Reuter's and the Agence Havas in that it is mainly 
national in its scope, and differs from the American press 
agencies in being directly under government control. 
Wolff's Bureau counts among its subscribers practically 
all the important papers in Germany, its despatches are 
forwarded over the imperial telegraph system toll free 
and have a certain precedence over private messages, and 
it is used, as we shall see, to disseminate governmentally 
edited news. Besides Wolff's, there are in Berlin and 
other larger capitals other news agencies which send out 
information, — telegraphed, printed, mimeographed, — 
flooding the newspaper world with official, semi-official, 
political or colorless news items, which play a great 
part in the make-up of the provincial press. The 
pirating of news from the larger journals is carried on 
by the provincial papers in Germany in a way that is 
absolutely conscienceless, possibly because, as will be 
shown below, the reading public seems less eager for 
news than for editorial comments thereon. 

This borrowing of news items is not, however, con- 
fined to the provincial press. As we have seen, the 
larger papers maintain correspondents in foreign capitals ; 
but only in a few cases is this correspondence forwarded 
by telegraph, since the papers, apparently following 



THE PRESS AND PUBLIC OPINION 363 

the desires of the reading public, prefer to spend their 
money on literary essays and scientific treatises rather 
than on telegraph and cable tolls. For their daily 
news from abroad they depend on Wolff's Bureau, 
which has a Kmited staff abroad, but derives most of 
its information through the great international agencies 
like Renter's. The cheapest and readiest source of 
information is the French and British dailies, whose 
news columns even the largest BerHn papers do not 
hesitate to use, reproducing with a generous hand news 
items from the Times, the Daily Chronicle and the 
Standard forty-eight hours after publication in London. 
The effect on Germany's relations with the outside 
world of this dependence on British-influenced news 
agencies has already been noted (cf. page 73 ff.). Even 
more important for the development of public sentiment 
at home is the lack of an adequate, independent system 
of telegraphic correspondence from foreign countries. 
The greater metropoHtan papers which do maintain 
foreign correspondents have not succeeded in placing 
in the foreign capitals men who are able to give a true 
picture of foreign feeling or through personal influence 
and adroitness to fill the semi-diplomatic mission of 
their ofl&ce, with the result that the readers of even 
such high-class journals as the Kolnische or Frankfurter 
Zeitung or the Berliner Tagehlatt are often uninformed 
as to the real condition of public affairs and public 
feeUng in France, England and America. The result 
has been that each succeeding international crisis has 
found the German reading public Hving in a fool's 
paradise of misinformation with regard to the mighty 
forces of public sentiment which sway cabinet decisions 
in London, Paris, Washington and to some extent 
Rome. Some of the greater German dailies, Hke the 
Kolnische, have spent vast sums in sending experts to 
spy out the highlands of Thibet or the savage stretches 
of the upper Congo and spread before their readers a 



364 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

wealth of information regarding the economic possi- 
bilities of southern Brazil or the valleys of Mesopotamia 
or the fauna and flora of the strangest islands of the 
southern seas. Of everything that has a scientific in- 
terest they render account with characteristic German 
enthusiasm for truth : in political matters their informa- 
tion is usually neither complete nor accurate and their 
correspondence from neighboring French and Italian 
cities or even from Alsace or the Prussian East is often 
but valorous vaporing of the tap-room sort. 

The weakness of the German papers as international 
newsgatherers is partly to be explained through the 
personnel of the German newspaper office. This sel- 
dom has at its command men of the standing of those 
who represent the great London papers in foreign capitals, 
a lack that is directly traceable to the inferior standing 
of the journaHst in Germany as compared with Western 
lands. In the Fatherland, as elsewhere, the newspaper 
man does not as a rule freely elect the profession which 
he practises, but gravitates into it as a result of circum- 
stances. Here, however, the result is worse than else- 
where, not only for the training of the journalist, but 
for the social status of the profession. In this land of 
speciaHzation every aspirant for a professional career 
selects or is supposed to select, or have his parents select 
for him, his hfe career before he goes to the university, 
and he is expected to follow it up with all his force and 
enthusiasm from that time forth forevermore. Few, 
very few, select journalism, for while the financial re- 
wards of the successful journalist are not inconsiderable, 
the social prestige belonging to the profession is still al- 
most as lacking and the professional pride among journal- 
ists as undeveloped as half a century ago, when Gustav 
Freytag wrote his charming comedy Die Journalisten to 
prove that German editors could be men of honor. 

The editorial chairs of Germany contain some brilliant 
men, who, feeling an inner call to journalism, have 



THE PRESS AND PUBLIC OPINION 365 

deserted the teacher's chair or even the lawyer's desk 
or surgeon's case. Besides these and others, whose lives 
have been given to a special training for the periodical 
press, there are a very great number who have found 
their way into the newspaper office simply because 
they have failed as lawyers or as teachers or in some 
other calling where success means official position. 
Hard-and-fast conditions of society in Germany admit 
a fall in the social scale, but seldom a rise. There is 
no such thing as working for a while in a minor or menial 
position and then entering one of the learned profes- 
sions : the educational system forbids it. The dark 
side of German efficiency is that those who have through 
temperament or other causes made a failure in the pro- 
fession for which they have prepared, have thereafter 
small chance of success in any calling of equal social 
rank or even in the close in-fighting of business competi- 
tion. To a good many such journalism offers the only 
field where they can still hope for a remunerative ac- 
tivity without entire loss of social position. 

In addition to the lack of preparation for their profes- 
sion under which so many Gernian newspaper men 
suffer, they are not permitted, as in France, to sign 
their articles. Not a few leading articles and summaries 
are signed by the chief editor ; but as a rule the German 
newspaper man is hidden behind the same impenetrable 
veil of anonjrmity that shrouds his colleagues in Eng- 
land and America. His work, be it ever so faithfully 
done, brings him no personal advertisement. On the 
other hand, the lack of Kberal institutions condemns the 
editor to something like political impotence; and ex- 
cept among the Social Democrats, where newspaper 
editors are frequently elected to legislative office, he 
rarely gets anything in the way of poKtical reward. 
The positions in the consular and even the diplomatic 
service that now and then recompense the American 
editor for faithful service to the party cause and the 



366 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

titles and distinctions which successful British journal- 
ists receive have no counterpart in Germany. With 
the exception of the two groups with the best developed 
political sense, the Conservatives and the Social Demo- 
crats, the journaUst plays but a small part in the active 
Hfe of the party and is practically never rewarded by 
the gift of political office. The effect of this upon 
the ambition of newspaper men can well be imagined. 
Thus cut off from adequate preparation, shut in behind 
a paralyzing anon>'Tnity, inehgible for political rewards, 
the German journalist cannot, save in the case of a few 
great papers, lay claim to an enviable social or political 
position. As a rule he does his duty faithfully within 
the limits allowed him by the laws and by the business 
considerations of his office. 

These considerations play a no more important part 
in Germany than in more democratic lands, where the 
cashier's office is too often permitted to dominate the 
editorial rooms. Absolute independence of the adver- 
tising columns and similar considerations is an ideal 
rather than a fact in every part of the newspaper world, 
though here the German publisher may be said to be 
less exposed to temptation because of the rigid laws 
which govern business competition and because by 
education the German is opposed to unfair play in 
business Hfe. The treatment of the editor as a hireling 
who must echo the policy of the publisher and guard the 
latter's political and financial interests is a sacrifice 
which the editorial profession makes everywhere to the 
capitalistic organization of society, and it is no more 
common in Germany than abroad, although it must be 
said that anything that in any way diminishes the im- 
portance and standing of the press as a tribune of the 
people must increase the temptation of publisher and 
editor to sell their influence to the highest bidder. 

The dignity of the press is then directly dependent 
upon the Uberty allowed it, and this Hberty in turn 



THE PRESS AND PUBLIC OPINION 367 

upon the habit of free institutions. It follows that 
those statesmen who have shown themselves most 
hostile to these institutions have in the history of pres- 
ent-day Germany done the most to prostitute the press. 
Bismarck, according to his press secretary, Moritz 
Busch, frequently expressed himself with cynical con- 
tempt on the subject of the honesty of the German 
press and its value as a representative of the people. 
"German papers," he declared in 1876, "are bound 
to be amusing reading, for they are meant to be glanced 
over while drinking a mug of beer and to furnish topics 
of lively conversation, usually about something which 
has taken place a long way off in foreign parts." The 
Iron Chancellor, however, himself made constant use 
of the newspapers to influence pubhc opinion both at 
home and abroad, maintaining at the foreign office, in 
addition to the official Hterary bureau, a private bureau 
under the adroit management first of Busch and later 
of Professor Aegidi. Through these men he played 
upon public opinion by means of articles inspired by 
himself and often prepared under his dictation, which 
were pubHshed not only in the semi-official Nord- 
deutsche Zeitung, the Kolnische Zeitung or the Kreuz- 
zeitung, but in papers issued in remote cities of the 
provinces, whose connection with the government 
would not be guessed. Sometimes under the direction 
of their wily chief his lieutenants would put the Chan- 
cellor's ideas in the form of a letter from a German 
long resident in Paris or a Prussian close to Vatican 
circles in Rome, plajdng upon the various keys and 
stops of prejudice and sentiment as the national or 
international situation demanded. By his Press Or- 
dinances of 1863 Bismarck had shown himself quite 
willing to throttle a free press, later on he assured 
himself of adequate newspaper support by means of a 
cleverness and an insincerity a Httle more than diplo- 
matic. That these means were at times highly immoral, 



368 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

no one who reads Busch's biography of the Chancellor 
can deny. From the income of the sequestrated prop- 
erty of the King of Hanover and the Landgrave of 
Hesse, who had been deposed on the annexation of 
these countries by Prussia in 1866, the Chancellor 
drew the so-called "reptile funds," by which the im- 
perial government maintained an influence over the 
press which extended into the remotest corners of Ger- 
many and made itself felt in London, Paris and Rome. 

All of this was justified by Bismarck and his apologists 
as a measure of war. It is certain that the Iron Chan- 
cellor had to face all of his Hfe the bitterest opposition 
on the part of a few independent newspapers, the most 
relentless from the Kreuzzeitung, which under its brill- 
iant editor Hammerstein forced the fighting in the 
most violent manner whenever Bismarck showed the 
slightest inclination toward liberal ideas. Confronted 
by bitter enemies not only in the Liberal and Clerical 
ranks but among his own class, the conservative aris- 
tocracy, as well, Bismarck did not hesitate to assure 
himself of press support by means which were sometimes, 
as has been pointed out, of doubtful morality. He 
believed that his enemies were poisoning the wells of 
public opinion; he himself disdained no weapons of 
deceit and bribery in his newspaper campaigns, furnish- 
ing false information to draw the fire of his opponents, 
or introducing misleading articles into the trusted organs 
of the opposition. The success of this poHcy for the 
Chancellor's aims cannot be denied; its final result 
was to weaken for decades the political influence of the 
German press at home and abroad. 

Bismarck's successors in the home and foreign offices 
inherited something of his cynical contempt for the 
press without the great Chancellor's skill in using it 
for his purposes. Indeed the attitude of the govern- 
ment officials in Germany toward the representatives 
of the fourth estate has been one of arrogance, not un- 



THE PRESS AND PUBLIC OPINION 369 

mixed with fear. Often the feeHng seems to be that 
the press represents an improper curiosity on the part 
of the masses about government doings, a curiosity 
which must be checked if possible, and if that is not 
possible, satisfied with such meagre news as the govern- 
ment may find fit for popular consumption. The re- 
sult is, that the same feehng is cultivated in the German 
newspapers that one finds often among German citizens 
toward public affairs : they have been told so often 
that the governing classes can manage things without 
their help that they have grown to believe it, and the 
press thus frequently accepts without hesitation govern- 
ment leadership and voluntarily resigns its rights as a 
tribune of the people. Two instances will illustrate 
this, both taken from the exciting days at the end of 
July, 1914, just before Germany declared war against 
Russia. On July 30 the air was full of rumors and the 
Berlin Lokalanzeiger published an extra announcing 
that war had been declared against Russia. This was 
followed immediately by a governmental denial and a 
disavowal and the withdrawal of its issue by the offend- 
ing paper. The premature news reached Munich, 
where it was published in various extra issues and 
caused the greatest excitement. At the height of this 
the newspapers, which were unable to communicate 
with Berlin on account of the overloading of the wires, 
applied to the Bavarian government to know the truth 
of the situation. For hours they were kept waiting, 
and finally with the greatest reluctance the Bavarian 
officials gave the information that they had not been 
advised of a declaration of war, which as a matter of 
fact did not take place till two days later. As show- 
ing how dependence on the government has become a 
matter of habit in crises, on the same day on which 
the press representatives were treated so superciliously 
by the Bavarian government when making inquiries 
regarding a matter of the highest public concern, the 



370 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

Munich Zeitung, a Radical paper, called urgently upon 
the imperial officials, in view of the disturbed state of 
the pubhc mind, to "take charge of public opinion!" 

As a rule the papers have no right to find fault with 
the government for not attempting to mould pubhc 
opinion. Since Bismarck's day, however, with the 
growth of healthfulness in German political Hfe, minis- 
terial efforts to control the public view have become 
less insidious, although they are not yet always sincere 
and devoid of trickery. At the present time govern- 
mental influence finds its way to the public mind through 
papers which are directly "official" and papers whose 
utterances are known as "semi-official" and also by 
means of articles in journals where government in- 
fluences are least suspected. The directly and openly 
"official" papers, such as the Reichsanzeiger and the 
organs of the army and navy and the various Anzeiger 
to be found in the Prussian provincial capitals and the 
capitals of the other German states, are merely organs 
of governmental announcement, and have no more in- 
fluence on public opinion than departmental announce- 
ments in Washington. Aside from these organs of 
the imperial and state governments, the various depart- 
ments of the federal government contain officials whose 
duty it is to furnish information to the press, the most 
important bureau of that kind being found in the Foreign 
Office. The organization of these bureaus is as efficient 
as the German bureaucracy always is, and their work 
includes not only the furnishing of information to the 
press, but the preparation of editorial leaders and all 
sorts of articles intended to work upon pubhc senti- 
ment, which find pubHcation in some of the "semi- 
official" papers. 

As has been noted, the most important agency for 
disseminating news throughout Germany is Wolff's 
Telegraphic Bureau, an institution which may be 
called a governmentally owned press association. It 



THE PRESS AND PUBLIC OPINION 371 

antedates the foundation of the new Gennan empire, 
having been organized in 1865 as a joint stock company, 
with the Prussian government in control of a majority 
of the stock. Like Reuter's Bureau, the Agence Havas 
and other national news agencies, the Wolff Bureau 
claims an international character. It maintains cor- 
respondents in foreign capitals and has in peace times 
affiliations with other great news agencies. It prac- 
tically controls the news field in Germany, although its 
known governmental character causes German readers 
to discount its despatches to some extent, less because 
there is any possibility of Wolff's Bureau falsifying the 
actual facts furnished from the world outside of Germany 
than from the feeling that other facts may be suppressed. 
To the American in Germany the tone of the Wolff 
messages, when they concern royalty, smacks not a 
little of unctuous servility. Good or bad, it forms the 
first means by which the German reader learns his for- 
eign news : that it has not developed further in past 
years as a real newsgatherer is due less to governmental 
control than to the traditional lack of interest among 
Germans in international affairs. 

Next to Wolff's Bureau come the information bureaus 
of the government offices, referred to above, and that 
brings up the question of "semi-official" papers. Just 
which papers deserve this title is hard to say, the Ger- 
man press itself being often in the dark as to how far 
government influence extends over certain papers. 
Universally recognized as the government mouth- 
piece is the Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung of Berlin, 
which has been in the service of the Prussian and the 
imperial government since the sixties. Bismarck used 
it from the early days of his chancellorship, and since 
that time it has published the government's views, 
particularly on foreign affairs, prepared in the govern- 
ment offices and under the direction of the imperial 
chancellor and occasionally of the emperor himself. 



372 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

The statements of the rather old-fashioned Nord- 
deutsche are recognized as having the highest authority. 
At the other end of the scale stands the rural daily which 
champions the government program and especially at 
election time rages against the Social Democrats with 
eager zeal in return for the local government advertising 
given by the all-powerful local administrator, the 
Landrat. Between the two there extends a whole 
line of papers, whose articles are regularly or occasion- 
ally inspired by the federal or state officials. Certain 
journals, Hke the Kdlnische Zeitung, the Tdgliche 
Rundschau of Berlin and the Hannoverische Courier, 
have been regularly used to express government opinion 
on domestic or foreign affairs, the actual subject-matter 
or the general ideas being furnished from the Home 
or Foreign Office. Frequently the reading public is 
hard put to it to know whether articles in these papers 
represent the ideas of the government or not, for even 
the staid Norddeutsche occasionally kicks over the traces 
and treats the topics of the day in a manner which is 
quite opposed to all theories of feudal-conservative ad- 
ministration. In proportion, however, as the news 
matter concerns the person or entourage of the Emperor 
or one of the rulers of the major states or a foreign 
crisis the articles in the papers in question are apt to 
reflect the feeling in government circles, for the value 
of the proper public treatment of such subjects is well 
understood by the governing class. The public and 
semi-public utterances of the Emperor are regularly 
reported by an official stenographer and carefully edited 
by the Foreign Office before publication. 

"One cannot carry on international politics without 
a press." This statement of the late Marschall von 
Bieberstein, formerly German foreign minister, is un- 
doubtedly confirmed by the practice of every civilized 
land. But there is considerable difference between the 
information furnished the national press in London, 



THE PRESS AND PUBLIC OPINION 373 

Paris and Washington and the press articles which find 
their way into the German "semi-official" papers, a 
difference pecuKar to the German government. In the 
more democratic countries the press is taken sufficiently 
into the government's confidence as to facts to enable 
it to fulfil its mission as the mouthpiece of the nation. 
In Germany the imperial and Prussian government by 
the use of its system of anonymous inspiration has been 
accustomed to play upon the various organs in which 
the government's views are wont to appear so as to 
control public opinion, fanning or restraining the fires 
of national enthusiasm as the foreign situation demands. 
This was illustrated in the careful management of the 
press in the Morocco crisis of 191 1, when the anti- 
French and anti-British feeling was alternately stimu- 
lated and checked; incontestibly also in the days 
preceding the outbreak of war in 1914, when a series 
of "hands off!" articles following Austria's ultimatum 
to Serbia was well adapted to steel and inspire the 
national spirit for the approaching crisis. 

Occasionally, however, public opinion in Germany 
gets very much out of hand. This was the case during 
the Boer War, when the waves of enthusiasm for the 
South African republics rolled high in spite of all efforts 
of the governmentally inspired press to pour oil upon 
them, and in 1906 when through the Kaiser's interview 
with the Daily Telegraph correspondent the last phases 
of the pro-British attitude of the imperial government 
at the time of the struggle with the Boers were laid 
bare. On such occasions as this, when German ideals 
are strongly touched, the press arrays itself with force 
and remarkable unanimity on the popular side and 
leads an outbreak of Teutonic fury that echoes in 
every home and hall of the Fatherland. Such unanimity 
is, however, rare. Some of the strongest papers are 
handicapped in their influence on public opinion by the 
suspicion of government inspiration. All tend to suffer. 



374 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

so far as they are not the mouthpieces of the Foreign 
Ofi&ce, from a lack of a feeling of responsibility, passing 
in their leading articles from an unmotivated exultation 
over Germany's present and future situation to an 
equally unfounded despair. 

Much more than in foreign matters has the system 
of governmental influence been harmful to the German 
press in matters of domestic poHcy. While the ministry 
no longer poisons the wells of pubKc opinion as in Bis- 
marck's day, it does greatly impair the influence of a 
great section of the press. During crises Hke that 
before the Reichstag election of 1907 or the discussions 
preceding the passage of the Defense Bill in 1913, the 
imperial ministry constantly played upon the keys and 
stops of the press. Here, however, there has grown 
up in the great National Liberal and Radical papers, 
not to speak of the vast network of Socialist organs, 
led by the Berlin Vorwdrts, an array of popular tribunes, 
who guard jealously the interests of the economic groups 
which they represent and are themselves free from all 
suspicion of unfair government influence. 

Almost all of the great papers of Germany are in fact 
strict party organs, only a few like the Lokalanzeiger of 
Berlin professing to be impartial in matters political. 
PoHtical interests have, as we have seen, combined with 
economic interests in Germany, so that journals repre- 
sent not merely a party, but an economic group as well. 
Thus the Kreuzzeitung, the old organ of the Conserva- 
tive party, is likewise the most influential representa- 
tive of agrarian interests, while Radical organs like the 
Frankfurter Zeitung have their constituency among the 
financial and commercial classes of the cities and the 
great National Liberal papers, like the Kolnische 
Zeitung, the Tagliche Rundschau of Berlin and the 
Hamburger Nachrichten, represent the industrial in- 
terests and those of the upper middle class. It is but 
natural that those political parties which are most 



THE PRESS AND PUBLIC OPINION 375 

closely identified with economic groups should be rep- 
resented by the most aggressive press. Thus the two 
groups which occupy opposite ends of the poHtical scale, 
the Conservatives and the SociaHsts, whose organizations 
rest on a strong community of economic interest, have 
an aggressive and well-disciplined press ; and as a result 
it is chiefly among the Conservative and SociaHst editors 
that one finds men of strong personal influence on the 
counsels of the party. Next to them comes the press 
of the Centre party, led by the powerful Germania in 
Berlin, a journal which was founded in 1870 with the 
first leap into power of the ultramontane party and which 
has valiantly led the firing line in defense of Roman 
CathoHc interests ever since. Between these extremes 
stands a long line of papers with liberal and radical 
leanings. It is remarkable indeed that by far the 
greater number of journals of national and international 
standing in Germany are National Liberal in faith or 
tendency, just as this party, with all of its trimming 
and irresolution in program, contains a vastly greater 
proportion of the brains of the empire than its electoral 
figures would lead one to suppose. Papers Hke the 
Kolnische Zeitung, the MUnchner Neueste Nachrichten, 
the Schwabische Merkur of Stuttgart, the Hannoverische 
Courier or the Tdgliche Rundschau of Berlin, with their 
Radical contemporaries, the Berliner Tageblatt, the 
Vossische Zeitung of Berlin and the Frankfurter Zeitung^ 
represent the very best that German journahsm has to 
offer, both as newsgatherers and in the national-patriotic 
tone of their policies. In Germany as elsewhere the 
more narrow the political attitude of a paper, the less 
its importance as a gatherer of news. 

Every poKtical, social and economic direction then 
has its own press, which watches jealously over the 
interests of its group and presents them with more or 
less passion and narrowness. From the wild chauvinism 
of the Berlin Deutsche Tageszeitung or Post to the bitter 



376 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

class appeals of the Socialistic Vorwdrts, each strikes 
its own peculiar note and plays the pipe for its party's 
dancing. It seldom happens indeed that a newspaper 
ties itself completely to the fortunes of a political leader, 
as in France, nevertheless the party press reflects in 
striking fashion the individualism and separatism of 
German politics as well as the pettiness and narrowness 
which is a part of factional strife. The fulminations 
of the agrarian aristocrat against the inheritance tax, 
those of the manufacturer against the income tax or the 
radical against the tariff on food-stuffs and the appeals 
of the Social Democrat to class feeling echo and re- 
echo harshly and shrilly according as the acoustic space 
furnished by the individual sheet is large or small. 

The German, whether country squire, townsman or 
peasant-farmer, demands that the paper which he 
reads beside the family lamp or the restaurant table 
shall support first of all Germany's claims abroad and 
secondly, the program of his particular party, with 
loyalty, which is the trait which he most reveres. In 
no country is a newspaper more clearly tagged with 
its party name, and in no country does the reader insist 
more strongly that it shall remain true to its colors. 
Through thick and thin, right or wrong, in disaster or 
success, the paper must be the defender, apologist 
and conserver of the party's traditions. Every act of 
the party's leaders must be championed, every move of 
the party's opponents must be attacked or given an 
unflattering interpretation. Characteristic of this is 
the attitude of the papers in reporting political debates. 
"I always took care that the Whig dogs should not get 
the best of it," said Dr. Johnson in speaking of his 
parliamentary reporting, and something like this has 
become the motto of the German press. Even journals 
of the highest standing almost always have their party's 
representative emerge from a political discussion covered 
with honor "for his clear and practical demonstration 



THE PRESS AND PUBLIC OPINION 377 

of the facts," while his opponent invariably "seeks to 
confuse the matter and takes refuge in excuses and 
hedging." 

The result of this attitude on public opinion is still 
further to narrow and to embitter poHtical life. The 
unfortunate side of this Kfe, already pointed out, is that 
it splits the nation into factions and creates among these 
factions the feehng that the government is a hostile 
force with which in various crises the best terms possible 
are to be made. The result is that the German citizen 
gets very little help from the press in laying aside the 
swaddling clothes of political separatism. He swears 
by his Frankfurter or Magdehurger or Kdlnische and 
avoids other papers like the pest. This attitude toward 
the newspapers is characteristic of the narrow partisan 
in every country. An especially unfortunate result 
in Germany, however, is the weakening of Uberalism 
through the dissipation of its energies in factional 
controversies. Radical and National Liberal papers 
have found it as impossible to make common cause 
against feudal pressure and agrarian demands in the 
press as in parKament, and the Social Democratic papers 
attack the middle-class BerKn Tagehlatt as fiercely as 
they do the feudal Kreuzzeitung. 

Unfortunately then political factionahsm and bhnd 
subserviency to the party program harm the inde- 
pendence of the press and damage its influence as an 
organizer of pubHc opinion. On the other hand it 
seems that the sources of public opinion are kept purer 
from strictly financial and business contamination in 
Germany than elsewhere. Such bribery as there is, is 
usually backed in some way by government influence, 
which dominates many a petty provincial or rural sheet. 
In the various "districts" and "circles" into which 
Prussia is divided some one of the local newspapers 
enjoys the official advertising and is regarded as the 
governmental mouthpiece. This provincial sheet, which 



378 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

assumes the proud title of "Official Gazette" {Amts- 
und Kreisblatt), is a private undertaking, of course, but 
is strongly under the influence of the local crown official, 
the Landrat, who has the privilege of withdrawing at 
any time the official titles and official advertising. 
Naturally the paper is expected to support the govern- 
ment, and particularly the policies of the Conservative 
party, with all vigor, and the Landrat sees to it that 
it goes for the Social Democrats without gloves and 
he permits nothing to pass uncensured that might be 
construed as a reflection on the ruler or the monarchy. 
During electoral campaigns the editor of such a paper 
must do his utmost to prevent any increase in the 
Radical or the Socialist vote in his district, if he would 
avoid a vigorous bulljdng from the all-powerful Landrat, 
who is nearly always a member of the feudal class. 

Aside from such instances of official terrorism, it is 
not usual to fi.nd German journals listening to financial 
seduction. Certain papers, it is true, represent par- 
ticular business interests, as the Rheinwestfalische 
Zeitung of Diisseldorf those of the Westphalian mine 
operators and iron and steel manufacturers. The big 
business interests, indeed, have their own press, which 
is in great measure independent of party, although 
supporting of course Conservative or National Liberal 
poHcies. Thus the Krupps and iron and steel interests 
are said to own the Berlin Neueste Nachrichten, which 
represents most adequately those industries and the 
financiers behind them, while individuals identified 
with the Agrarian League own the Berlin Tageszeitung. 
It is, however, extremely rare when a newspaper modi- 
fies its understood political policy as a result of financial 
considerations. Especially in the case of the Social 
Democratic press is the influence of the advertising 
columns on the papers' policy negligible. 

Of aU the influences then which work upon the press, 
the government through its various open and subter- 



THE PRESS AND PUBLIC OPINION 379 

ranean agencies is far and away the strongest. Even 
in peace times the BerKn ministry may hold a heavy 
hand on public information through its control of the 
only great news agency, Wolff's Bureau, to which every 
German paper is in a sense tributary, from the metro- 
poHtan journal with its four editions daily to the "patent 
outside" of the East Prussian or Bavarian village. 
The result is a marked lack of enterprise in seeking news 
on the part of the individual journals, greatly in contrast 
with the papers of western Europe and America. To 
begin with, in the very arrangement of the greater 
number of German papers the news plays a much less 
important part than the editorial and essay, for the 
telegraphic news is usually relegated to the inside pages, 
the first page being given over to discursive articles, 
which in the greater journals may concern the most 
recent news, but in the smaller papers usually limp 
twenty-four hours behind it. More often the first 
columns in the morning or evening editions are devoted 
to an essay on some political or sociological subject 
or to a resume, such as would be found in the Sunday 
issue of an American paper. Even some of the best 
German newspapers put the latest news in the last 
columns of the inside of the last page, the place which 
seems to foreign readers the least conspicuous in the 
whole paper. News is indeed furnished with startHng 
frequency by the greater German papers, such journals 
as the Kolnische Zeitung putting out four editions daily, 
with a specialization that is characteristic of other sides 
of German industry, one edition containing general 
news, another especially market reports, etc. The 
wealth of material which such a daily offers, including 
social and political philosophy, fiction, poetry, travel, 
biography and Hterary criticism, much of it of consider- 
able scientific and Hterary value, is confusing to the 
American, who seeks first of all the news in his daily 
paper. 



380 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

There are other confusing sides in the German attitude 
towards the day's news when approached with British 
or American prejudices. One of the most striking is 
the habit of even the best papers of interlarding news 
despatches with editorial comment. Provincial sheet 
and metropolitan daily alike are apt to introduce tele- 
graphic news which is favorable to the cause which 
they represent with salvos of editorial applause, while 
unfavorable items are emasculated by constant inter- 
linear comments signed "D.R." {Der Redakfeur, the 
editor), such as, "We doubt that!" "Well, we shall 
wait and see !" or even "This is an open falsehood !" or 
"Such a campaign of lies!" and similar remarks. Or 
passages of crucial importance in the text may be in- 
terrupted by a bracketed row of question marks or 
points of exclamation. This confusing mixture of edi- 
torial opinion with the day's news is not countenanced 
by some prominent publishers, like Louis Ullstein, the 
owner of the Berlin Morgenpost and other publications, 
who have tried to make head against it. Like most 
newspaper sins, this is also to be laid at the door of the 
reader, for it must be said that the German reader 
likes to have his news served up in a way which shall 
spice the attractiveness of welcome announcements 
and soften the bitterness of unwelcome things. The 
German, it must never be forgotten, embraces a cause 
with his whole soul, whether it be the cause of the 
whole Fatherland, or that of his economic class or 
political party, or even his side in the teapot tempest 
of local politics. He as a devoted champion and good 
fighter, but also a hard loser, and his tendency to ro- 
manticism often permits him to revel in a paradise of 
dreams even when the enemy is at the gate. This 
characteristic of the great body of Germans is not of 
course a weakness of the politically trained classes nor 
of those aggressive men who guided Germany's industry 
to the front. But it must not be forgotten that the 



THE PRESS AND PUBLIC OPINION 381 

great majority of German citizens are just emerging 
from a state of political immaturity. They devote 
themselves with patient conscientiousness and enthus- 
iasm to the daily duties of home and family, handiwork 
or profession, and leave poKtical leadership to those 
who make a profession of ruling, quite wilHng to accept 
their orders so long as their patriotism seems trust- 
worthy. 

If the liking for news flavored with the sauce of 
editorial comment indicates a weakness in German 
public opinion, the distaste for a directly sensational 
treatment of news is a strength. Germany has, to be 
sure, its political press of a sensational sort. The wild 
chauvinism of some of the Berhn and provincial journals 
is not to be outdone in Paris or Petrograd ; but in all 
that does not concern politics, the most sensational of 
German journals is as mild when compared with certain 
French or American dailies as the poems of Felicia 
Hemans with the early effusions of Swinburne. In the 
whole field of personalities and in the matter of crime 
especially, the German papers show a decency and re- 
serve all the more refreshing in view of the flood of 
impure books which has risen to such a height in Ger- 
many. There are, to be sure, yellow journals in Berlin 
and Munich, and especially certain comic weeklies, the 
clever Simplicissimus at their head, show a coarseness 
of tone which has on more than one occasion shut them 
out from the mails in those countries where puritanism 
is still a strong tradition ; but the German demands that 
the news columns of his daily paper shall be clean, and 
the law backs him up in it. For here as elsewhere in 
German life, the correction of abuses is not left simply 
to the force of public opinion. Court proceedings must 
be reported in such a way that they cannot possibly 
educate to crime; certain classes of cases are entirely 
shut out of the papers, and it may be said in general 
that the atmosphere of the German court room does 



382 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

not lend itself to yellow journalism. Offenders against 
the press laws are invariably punished, often with a 
severity which seems really out of proportion to the 
offense. 

Especially does the German journalist have to walk 
carefully to avoid conflict with the rigid Kbel laws. 
Even the most innocent remark about the behavior of 
some pubHc servant or a news item which permits of a 
construction placing some private individual in an un- 
flattering light may call forth a demand for a public 
retraction or provoke an expensive Hbel suit. The 
German law, indeed, goes very far in protecting the 
individual in all the- rights of personality, especially 
in the right of avoiding pubhcity. The retractions 
published from time to time in German papers are one 
of the most enlightening chapters in a study of the 
German press, illustrating as they do how fully the 
rights of the individual are guarded. The feeling seems 
to prevail that the doings of no person or group of 
persons shall be dragged before the public without the 
consent of those concerned. It goes without saying 
that the interviewer plays no considerable role in the 
German newspaper world, and that the position of the 
reporter is much less important than in those countries 
where an unrestricted license of the press prevails. 
Indeed the German law goes so far that in many ways 
the importance of the press as a sanitary agent is taken 
away. A newspaper is sometimes forced by threats or 
legal sentence to retract a statement when the retraction 
is practically a falsehood, for the mere fact that a news 
item is true does not by any means serve as a defense 
against a libel suit, if the item may be construed as a 
reflection on the behavior of any person or group of 
persons. Thus a case is recorded where an editor was 
convicted for publishing a statement reflecting on a 
hospital, although it was shown in the court proceedings 
that the statement had been made in a public medical 



THE PRESS AND PUBLIC OPINION 383 

gathering. In this case the law guaranteed to the 
physician the right of criticism, but denied to the editor 
the right of publicity. 

The libel laws are the constant burden of editorial 
complaint in Germany. Especially the Social Demo- 
cratic press has had to suffer under their administration 
at the hands of their poHtical opponents. The German 
bench is far above any suspicion of bias except that 
which comes with the belief held in official circles that 
the Socialists are public enemies, combined with a 
reverence for those in authority which degenerates at 
times into servility. This, the SociaHst press has con- 
tended, was hardly the right source from which it might 
expect a square deal. In the nineties and the earliest 
years of the present century heavy sentences, often 
from three to five years in prison, were pronounced 
against Social Democratic editors for Use majeste. The 
modification of the law in 1908 (cf. page 108) did much 
to soften the tone of the SociaHst and Radical press 
towards royalty in Prussia; but prosecutions for libel 
still occur when the press of these parties breaks the 
bounds prescribed by conservative feeling in its criti- 
cism of some municipal official or even of a minister of 
state. Such cases are usually fought bitterly up through 
the various courts and usually result in a conviction. 
With the increase of the number and influence of the 
Socialist press — the party had by 1910 established 
daily newspapers in more than 68 cities — the watch- 
fulness of prosecuting officers under the inspiration of 
the higher provincial officials is kept constantly alert. 
All of this has not tended to soften the tone of the 
SociaHst editor, who never turns the other cheek to the 
smiter. This unfortunate state of affairs has done much 
to lower the tone of poHtical discussion in Germany to a 
bitterness and brutality, which, especially in electoral 
campaigns, swells into a crescendo of bilHngsgate and 
presents a most unattractive side of the German press. 



384 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

No stronger evidence could be presented that the cure 
for the shrill outbreaks of political immaturity is to be 
found in liberty and not in constant paternal correction. 

In spite of these false notes, the lack of sensationalism 
in the treatment of news is one of the most refreshing 
characteristics of the German press. The fact that in 
Prussia and in some other German states every issue 
must show the names of the persons responsible for the 
news and editorial portions and for the advertising 
columns is a guarantee ; and the innate German love of 
truth and hatred of sham hangs heavy on the success 
of those metropolitan sheets which show a dangerous 
tendency to rival the yellow papers of France and 
America. That these tendencies are manifest in some 
of the Berlin papers is not to be denied, and it is to be 
expected that they will continue to grow in proportion 
as the Americanization of the imperial capital eman- 
cipates the individual spirit from the traditions of the 
past. But the whole spirit of German public opinion 
is opposed to this hectic demoralization of the press. A 
few years ago, when an enterprising Berlin firm estab- 
lished an illustrated weekly on the model of those 
British and American papers which have a maximum 
of the personal in pictures and articles and a minimum 
of news and literature, the undertaking was received 
with a shaking of heads everywhere. "This personal 
advertisement is against the genius of our people," re- 
marked a prominent Leipsic business man concerning 
it. "It is an importation from America and is fostering 
a spirit which Germany has never known." It must 
be said in defense of America, however, that the German 
press admits without hesitation advertisements and a 
sort of humor which in America would be impossible 
in any paper using the mails. 

The reformation of the libel laws cannot long be de- 
layed in Germany, and the result will almost certainly 
be an improvement in the tone of political and public 



THE PRESS AND PUBLIC OPINION 385 

discussion. It is, however, very improbable that the 
tone of the German daily papers will be much bright- 
ened thereby. The staring headlines which form such 
a feature of the foreign press the German newspaper 
reader knows only in a mild form : he demands that 
he be given that which is true or at least that which is 
in accord with his ideas of the truth, and wants no 
trifling with his news in order to make it sensational. 
The interesting "write-up" of the American or English 
reporter cannot therefore find a place in a paper which 
takes itself and its functions so seriously. The editor 
may himself destroy the effect of the news by critical 
interpolations, but these spring in most cases from soul 
convictions which are those of the reader himself. The 
latter disdains any attempt to make either news or 
editorial matter interesting, and this paired with the 
German lack of feeling for literary form makes the 
German press dull reading for those who seek in it 
anything like the sparkle and crisply classical presen- 
tation of the Paris journals. The dull and formal 
narration of the news, fortified usually by editorial 
comment, political resumes, rhodomontades of doubtful 
inspiration, accurate but colorless police and market 
reports, with here and there an outburst of Teutonic 
rage against foreign competitors or political opponents, 

— these make up the current parts of the newspapers, 
and certainly do not appeal to those who read the 
journals for the froth of life or expect from them models 
of literary excellence. 

Since Schopenhauer's day, indeed, "newspaper Ger- 
man" has been a term of contempt. "Pig German, 

— I beg pardon, — newspaper German !" exclaimed the 
celebrated pessimist more than half a century ago in a 
memorable essay on "The Butchery of the German 
Language." "The linguistic debauch," he exclaimed 
in his customary gentle style, "to which no other nation 
can show a parallel, seems to proceed in the main from 



386 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

the political newspapers, the lowest form of literature, 
and go from them into the literary journals and finally 
into books." It is certain that newspaper Gernian has 
done nothing to remove this reproach since Schopen- 
hauer's day; indeed, the style of German prose, which 
seems to grow more cumbersome and unwieldy every 
year, can charge much of its degeneracy to the daily 
and weekly press. An illustrated journal of the highest 
standing introduces to its readers a series of pictures 
"from the by-the-Russians-temporarily-occupied-and- 
by-the - German-army-under-the - brilliant - leadership-of- 
General-von-Hindenburg-gloriously-reconquered prov- 
ince of East Prussia," and similar sins against all of the 
muses may be found in the best journals. Of recent 
years a reaction has been observable, led by papers 
like the Vossische Zeitung of Berlin, "Auntie Voss," 
as it is humorously called by its contemporaries, which 
looks back on a century and three-quarters of literary 
history since no less a stylist than young Gotthold 
Ephraim Lessing contributed to its early numbers, or 
the Frankfurter Zeitung, which commands some very 
able pens. 

Such criticisms of the German newspaper as litera- 
ture, however, apply only to its news and editorial 
columns. Besides these transient expressions of the 
popular spirit which are written day by day and exist 
only for a day, the German journals, provincial and 
metropolitan alike, offer each day a mass of material, 
which is not merely literature in the strict sense of the 
word, but which for richness and variety of literary and 
scientific material has no equal anywhere in the world's 
press. It is the custom for most papers to maintain a 
feuilleton, separated from news and editorial matter 
by a tj^e-bar, which reserves the lower half of the page 
for matters of more lasting content, non-contempora- 
neous or quasi-contemporaneous in their interest. This 
essay was a French invention developed in Germany 



THE PRESS AND PUBLIC OPINION 387 

early in the nineteenth century by the Jewish prose 
virtuoso Heinrich Heine, and it has cultivated a light- 
ness and gracefulness of style which is strikingly in 
contrast to the soggy editorial or news paragraph. In 
light essays on science, Kterature or art, the whole field 
of modern culture is laid under tribute with a style 
which recalls the conversational tone of the drawing 
room or club. The feuilleton writers of Germany lack 
the grace which marks the best salon literateurs of the 
French press ; but they count among them some of the 
most brilliant stylists of the nation and maintain a 
high standard in the wealth and variety of their scientific 
material. 

To these articles of critical and conversational tone 
are to be added literary works, such as novels by the 
best authors of Germany, published serially in the 
daily papers. Gerhart Hauptmann's Atlantis first 
appeared in the daily edition of the Berlin Tageblatt, 
and other names scarcely less well known on the Ger- 
man Parnassus are to be found in the daily press of the 
larger cities. Articles of more solid import appear in 
special supplements, forming a weekly or semi-weekly 
part of the larger papers. Some of these command the 
ablest pens in Germany in the field of literature, art and 
science, and become an indispensable reference material 
for investigators and critics. Indeed, the literary 
criticism of such papers as the Berlin Tag and the 
Vossische Zeitung or the Cologne Volkszeitung is among 
the best that appears anywhere in Germany. The 
well-nigh inexhaustible wealth of material offered in 
this way may be shown by a resume of the various 
supplements issued within one week to accompany the 
morning and afternoon news and editorial matter and 
market reports of a large Berlin newspaper : a technical 
supplement of eight pages; a supplement containing 
essays on legal subjects, four pages; a literary review, 
two pages; an illustrated supplement, six pages; a 



388 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS 

comical supplement, six pages; a household supple- 
ment, six pages; and a page each for women's affairs, 
for art and drama criticism and for tourists. In addi- 
tion the regular issues contained a letter from China 
on politico-economic subjects, a sketch of the Hungarian 
drama, and essays on the teaching of pedagogics in the 
universities and on the sleeping sickness in the African 
colonies, and one page daily devoted to a review of 
sports, mostly horse racing and aeronautics. 

It is evident that while the German newspaper does 
not as a newsgatherer satisfy western demands, it 
brings to its readers each day a wealth of material 
which in other lands would find its way into the 
"heavier" magazines or into scientific periodicals. 
It is evident also that while the German who reads 
his chosen newspaper may be insufficiently informed 
or biassed regarding that which is called in press par- 
lance "hve news," he is schooled in scientific methods 
of observation and inquiry and in accuracy of report- 
ing regarding those things which can be divorced from 
the ephemeral passions of the day.' He finds in his 
daily or weekly journal not so much a raconteur of the 
day's doings as a pedagogue and staid mentor, who 
delights to lead him into the devious paths of science 
or the romantic world of ideas and ideals. The peda- 
gogical instinct and the enthusiasm for knowledge for 
its own sake, the love of truth and the careful accuracy 
in method, narrowness of poHtical view and passionate 
insistence on the personal standpoint : these ingredients 
of German character are nowhere more clearly exempli- 
fied than in the nation's press. 



mDEX 



Abdul Hamid 11 (1842- ), sultan of 
Turkey, 43, 77, 90, 92, 192. 

Abschlusspriifung, 343. 

Accident Insurance Act, 181. 

Adana, 92. 

Adige, 42. 

administrative board, cf . City. 

Adriatic, 42, 44, 68. 

^gean Sea, 36, 92. 

Aegidi, Ludwig Karl (1825-1901), 367. 

Afghanistan, 54. 

Agadir, 8, 18, 62. 

Agence Havas, 362, 371. 

Agrarian League, 128, 151, 152, 151- 
154, i6s, 378. 

Agrarian Party, cf. Conservative-, 
agrarian. 

agrarian tariff, 152-154. 

Aix-la-Chapelle, 221, 270, 280. 

Albania, 19, 36, 43-46, 68. 

Aleppo, 93. 

Alexander (1857-93), Prince of Bul- 
garia, 31. 

Alexander II (1818-81), Czar of Russia, 
6, 27. 

Algeciras Conference, 17, 39, 42, 48, 
49, 62, III, 115. 

Algeria, 16. 

Alliance of the Middle Classes, 165. 

Alsace, 3, 4, 218, 219, 364. 

Alsace-Lorraine, annexation, 3, 4, 
217; French resentment over, 7, 
10, 20, 30, 72 ; early government 
imder empire, 221-223; constitu- 
tion of, 106, 134, 156, 191, 212, 
225; in the Reichstag, 117, 120, 
123, 222, 224; German claim to, 
217-221; popular feeling toward 
Germany in, 223-232, 265 ; prog- 
ress in Germanization, 233 ; govern- 
ment of cities in, 277, 285, 289. 



Altona, 315. 

Altona reform school, 331, 332. 

America, 58, 84, 264, 289, 326, 363, 
365, 379, 384- 

Anatolia, 92. 

Anatolian Railway, 92, 93. 

Andrassy, Julius (1823-90), 28, 34. 

Ansiedlungs-Gesetz, 250. 

anti- Jesuit law, 208. 

anti-modemist oath, 207. 

anti-national parties, 117, 121, 123. 

anti-socialist laws, 181, 182. 

Argentine, 85. 

armed peace, 72. 

Armenian massacres, 90. 

Asquith, Herbert H. (1852- ), 62. 

Associated Press, 58. 

Association for Housing Reform, Ger- 
man, 301. 

Association Law, German, 250. 

Association of Eastern Marches, Ger- 
man, 249. 

Asia Minor, 39, 42, 90. 

Atlantis, Hauptmann's, 387. 

Augsburg, 177, 273, 302. 

Austria, in aUiance with Germany, 6, 
7, 26-28, 31 ; leans on Germany in 
the Balkans, 11, 35-37, 40, 41, 
373 ; annexes Bosnia and Herze- 
govina, 34-35 ; German element in, 
37~3Q; in rivalry with Italy, 41, 
44-46; Poles in, 235, 239, 244, 264; 
illiteracy in, 323. 

Austrian ultimatum to Serbia, 40. 

Austro-German Alliance, 26-38, 35, 
38-41. 

Baden, suffrage in, 141 ; Socialists, 188; 
KulturkampJ in, 203-204; cities of, 
285, 289, 292; schools of, 327, 341, 
3S8. 



389 



39° 



INDEX 



Bagdad, g2, 95. 

Bagdad Railway, 69, 94. 

Balkan Alliance, 11, 36, 67, 68, 91. 

Balkan states, 28, 30, 39, 54, 115, 200. 

Balkan wars, 11, 45, 67, 91. 

Ballin, Albert (1857- ), 163. 

banca ludowy, 253. 

Barbarossa, Frederick (i 121-89), Ger- 
manic emperor, 65, 89. 

Barmen, 160, 168, 272, 297. 

Bassermann, Ernst (1854- ), 170, 172. 

Bassora, 95. 

Bavaria, overseas' enthusiasm in, 61 ; 
Conservatives in, 121 ; subordinates 
local interests, 140; national char- 
acteristics of, 141 ; Socialists in, 
188; religion in, 200; in Kultur- 
kampf, 203, 204; Center party in, 
213; cities of, 277, 298, 307; schools 
of, 320, 323, 327, 335, 337, 345, 
3SO, 352. 

Bavarian Palatinate, 115; cf, Rhine 
Palatinate. 

Bebel, August (1840-1913), 179, 180, 
186, 197. 

Befestigungs-Gesetz, 250. 

Belfort, 23. 

Belgium, 13, 68, 70, 80, 201, 323. 

Belgrade, 40. 

Berlin, press, 58, 74, 361-363, 374, 
375, 381, 384; growth of, 269, 
270; government of, 278, 280, 282, 
285, 286, 290; trading enterprises, 
29s ; land values, 301 ; popular 
culture, 312, 314, 31s; Realschulen, 
332 ; church tax, 348, 349. 

Berlin Congress, 28, 54, 86. 

Berlin Exposition for City Building, 
306, 307. 

Berlin group (Roman Catholic), 210. 

Berlin Lokalanzeiger, 369. 

Berlin Merchants' Association, 301. 

Berlin Neuesle Nachrichten, 378. 

Berlin Post, 6, 375. 

Berlin Produce Exchange, 151. 

Berlin Schloss, 136. 

Berlin Schlossplatz, 129, 308. 

Berlin Tag, 387. 

Berlin Tageblatt, 174, 363, 375, 377, 
387. 

Bernstein, Edward (1850- ), 185, 186. 



Bethmann-HoUweg, Theobald von 
(1856- ), IIS, 116, 130, 134, 137- 

Beust, Friedrich von (1809-86), 26. 

Bezirk, 285. 

Bismarck, Otto von (1815-98), 
policy toward France, 3, 7, 10, 15, 
20; toward Austria, 26-28; toward 
Russia, 31 ; toward the Balkans, 35 ; 
toward England, 54 ; view of treaties, 
46 ; of British liberalism, 52, 53 ; of 
diplomacy, 75, 76, 83; of imiversal 
suffrage, 102 ; of Prussian liberalism, 
105, 139; of a responsible ministry, 
114; of German parties, 116, 117; 
policy toward German parties, 118, 
119, 122-124, 148, 151, 155; 
toward the Socialists, 178, 180- 
182 ; toward the Roman Catholic 
Church, 204, 205, 209; toward 
Alsace-Lorraine, 217, 222, 223; 
toward the Poles, 244, 246; toward 
the press, 367, 368. 

Bismarck Archipelago, 85. 

Bismarck's Memoirs (jGedanken und 
Erinnerungen), 53. 

block system, 126, 130, 132. 

"blue-black" block, 130, 206. 

Bochum, 168, 273. 

Bodenstedt, Friedrich von (1819-92), 
93- 

Boer republics, 56, 57. 

Boer War, 51, 53, 57-61, 70, in, 112, 
373. 

Bohemia, 38, 265. 

Bonn, 270. 

Bordeaux, 3, 217. 

Bosnia, 28, 30, 34. 

Bosphorus, 28, 54. 

Boulanger, Georges Ernst (1837-91), 
8. 

Bourgogne, 220. 

Boxers, Chinese, 79, 88. 

Brazil, 85. 

Brandenburg, 139, 155, 276. 

Brant, Sebastian (1457-1521), 218. 

Brenner, 48. 

Breslau, 269, 283, 302, 312. 

Briand, Aristide (1862- ), 7. 

Brindisi, 47. 

Brunhuber, Robert (quoted), 360. 

Brunswick, 122, 123. 



INDEX 



391 



Bukowina, 232. 

Biilow, Bernard Ernst von (1815- 

79), 139- 
Biilow, Bernard, Prince von (1849- ), 

III, 112, IIS, 116, 129, 130, 206, 

247, 248. 
Bund der Landwirte, 128; cf. Agrarian 

League. 
Bundesrat, 101-104, 108, 109, 126, 

134, 140, 156, 208, 212, 223; cf. 

Federal Council. 
Biirgerschule, 326, 328, 347; cf. 

Middle School, 
burgomaster, 284, 285, 286. 
Busch, Moritz (1821-99), 7. 53> 54. 

367- 
Byron, 52, 235. 

Cambon, Jules (1845- ), 18. 

Camorra, 48. 

Canossa, 204. 

Caprivi, Count George Leo von 
(1831-99), II, 31, 32, 115, 127, 148, 
152, 205, 247. 

Cartels, 62. 

Casablanca, 17. 

Cassel, 102, 315. 

Catarro, 44. 

Catholic labor unions, 168, 169, 194, 
211, 213. 

Catholic Workingmen's Union, Ger- 
man, 211. 

Cavour, Count di (1810-61), 29. 

Centre party (cf. Clerical party), 60, 
III, 117, 122, 123, 129, 130, 132, 
14s, 201-216, 225, 260, 280, 337. 

Champagne, 22, 222. 

Charlemagne, 29, 237. 

Charlottenburg, 303, 333. 

Chemnitz, 160. 

Chemnitz Royal Industrial Academy, 
333. 

China, 75, 388. 

Churchill, Winston (1874- ), 64. 

Cilicia, 43. 

dty, German, administrative board, 
277, 281-284; art, 307; art muse- 
iims, 315; banks, 298; citizen 
council, 277, 279, 283 ; government, 
275-293 ; growth, 270-274 ; labor 
bureaus, 281, 298; land purchase, 



300-303; legal bureaus, 300; 
libraries, 310; music and theatres, 
313-315; overcrowding, 300-301, 
303-305; ownership and trading, 
294-297; Ordinances, 275; pawn- 
shops, 298 ; planning, 306, 307 ; 
playgrounds, 310; price fixing, 297. 

Civita Vecchia, 29. 

Clerical party (cf. Centre party), 
10, 48, 117, 120, 122, 127, 152, 
153. 157, 159, 168, 172, 345, 349, 
357- 

Clerical supervision of schools, 321, 
357, 358. 

coal strikes, 167, 168, 217. 

coal syndicate, 167. 

Coblenz, 221. 

Cologne, 58, 89, 125, 144, 160, 221, 
269, 274, 277, 278, 280, 283, 297, 
302, 361. 

Cologne group (Roman Catholic), 210. 

Cologne Volkszeitung, 387. 

Colonial Museum, 88. 

Colonial Society, 88. 

Colonies, 81, 85-89, 213. 

Combes, Justin Louis (1835- ), 204, 
215. 

commercial treaties, 152. 

commercial universities, 55, 271, 312. 

Commune, Paris, 7. " 

compulsory workingmen's insurance, 
9, 38, 66, 119, 127, 178, 181, 182, 
284, 293. 

confessional schools, 352, 353. 

Confirmation Law, 250. 

Congress of Berlin, 28, 54, 86. 

Congress of Vienna, 86. 

conquered provinces, 217-233. 

Conservative-agrarian group, 120, 121, 
127, 149, 150, 163, 190. 

Conservative party, in, 112, 117, 
128-130, 151-153, 168, 172, 280, 
337, 345, 349, 357, 366, 375. 

Constantinople, 11, 58, 77, 90, 91. 

continuation schools, 322, 334, 360. 

Corfu, 89. 

Council of Basel, 210; of Constance, 
210. 

Coimter-reformation, 238. 

Cracow, 254. 

Crefeld, 160, 288. 



392 



INDEX 



crematories, 144, 288. 

Crete, 92. 

Crispi, Francesco (1819-1901), 41. 

Croat, 38. 

Cromwell, 147. 

Cyrenaica, 58. 

Czech, 38, 39, 264, 265. 

Daily Telegraph interview, 59, in, 373. 

Dalmatia, 44. 

Damara Land, 86, 87. 

Danes, 120, 224, 275. 

d'Annunzio, Gabriele (1864- ), 43. 

Danzig, 237. 

Dardanelles, 27, 91. 

deathrate, German, 80, 81. 

Debussey, Claude Achille (1862- ), 

24. 
Decazes, Louis Charles, due (1819-86), 

16. 
Defense Bill, 11, 12, 20, 37, 61, 67, 

97, 131, 187, 374. 
Delcasse, Th6ophile (1852- ), 8, 

17, IIS- 
Deutsche Bank, 93, 163. 
Deutsche Revue, 360. 
Deutsche Rundschau, 360. 
Deutsche Tageszeitung, 375, 378. 
Deutscher Lehrerverein, 320, 325. 
Deutscher Ostmarkenverein, 249. 
Deutschfreisinnige, 118, 173. 
dictatorship paragraph, 222. 
Diedenhofen, 221. 
diplomacy, German, 15, 16, 18, 22, 

71, 75, 77- 
distress work, 299. 
Dittrich, Franz (1839- ), 215. 
Dortmund, 160, 361. 
Dresden, 58, 160, 269, 277, 280, 314, 

315- 

Dreyer, Max (1862- ), 354. 

Dreyfus, Alfred (1859- ), 8, 14, 15, 
114. 

Dual Alliance, 32, 34, 59 ; cf . Franco- 
Russian coalition. 

Duke of Cumberland, 123. 

Durazzo, 45, 46. 

Diisseldorf, 160, 271, 272, 283, 299, 
303, 306, 308, 309, 31S, 320, 361, 378. 

Diisseldorf Exposition for City Build- 
ing, 306- 



East Africa, 86, 87. 

Eastern Marches, The, 250. 

East Prussia, 121, 158, 190, 248, 

254, 257. 
Egypt, 4, 42, 79, 94. 
Einheitschule, 332. 
Eisenach Convention, 179. 
Elberfeld, 160, 298, 301. 
elementary industrial schools, sz5, 334- 
elementary school, cf. Volksschule. 
Eltemstunden, 300. 
emigration, 81, 84. 
Emperor, German, 106, 108, no. 
Engels, Friedrich (1820-85), 183. 
England, 18, 24, 41, 50-71, 81, 83, 

299, 326, 359, 363, 365- 
Enteignungs-Gesetz, 250. 
Enver Bey, 91. 
Epirus, 45, 46. 
Erfurt Platform, 185, 186. 
Erwin von Steinbach (?-i3i8), 218. 
Essad Pasha, 45. 
Essen, 160, 168, 278, 303. 
Euphrates, 69, 93-95. 
European Turkey, 35. 
Evangelical Church, 197. 
Evangelical-Sodal Congress, 301, 
Expropriation Law, 250. 

Far East, 82, 84. 

Federal Chancellor, cf. Imperial Chan- 
cellor. 

Federal Council, cf. Bimdesrat. 

Ferry, Jules (1832-93), 7, 15. 

feuilleton, 386. 

Fez, 18. 

Fichte, Johann Gottlieb (1762-1814), 
318. 

Fischart, Johann (1545-90), 218. 

Fischer, Anton (1832-1912), Cardinal, 
211. 

fleet building, German, 60, 61, 83, 
88, 

Folk Bank, 253, 255. 

Foreign Legion, 17. 

Forstrat, 284. 

Fortschrittliche Volkspartei, 118, 172, 

173- 
France, 3-25, 72, 127, 142, 217, 219- 
221, 227, 228, 230-233, 289, 359, 
i(>3, 365, 376, 384- 



INDEX 



393 



Franche Comte, 22. 

Francis Ferdinand (1863-1914), heir 

apparent of Austro-Hungary, 40. 
Francis Joseph (1830- ), emperor of 

Austria, 26, 38. 
Franco-Russian coalition (cf. Dual 

Alliance), 15, 17, 32, 67. 
Frank, Ludwig (1874-1914), 198. 
Frankfort on the Main, 269, 272, 280, 

297, 302-307, 313, 315, 362. 
Frankfort Parliament, 52, 236. 
Frankfort reform schools, 331, 332. 
Frankfort University, 313. 
Frankfurter Zeitung, 64, 174, 373, 386. 
Frederick (1831-88), crown prince of 

Prussia, 26, 52, 53 ; German emperor, 

55, 105- 
Frederick of HohenzoUem (1371-1440), 

Elector of Brandenburg, 155. 
Frederick the Great (1712-86), king 

of Prussia, 24, 51, 264, 318, 322, 349. 
Frederick William I (168&-1740), king 

of Prussia, 342. 
Frederick William III (1770-1840), 240. 
Frederick William IV (i 795-1861), 

106, 142, 241. 
Free Conservatives, 120, 145, 156. 
Freisinnige, 170. 
Freisinnige Vereinigimg, 118. 
Freisinnige Volkspartei, 118. 
French Congo, 19. 
Freytag, Gustav (1816-05), 314, 364. 

Galicia, 232, 244, 260, 263. 

Gambetta, Leon (1838-82), 7. 

Gartenlaube, Die, 360. 

Gazeta Grudzionska, 272. 

Gelsenkirchen, 273. 

Gemeinde, 276. 

Gemeinderat, 281. 

Genoa, 47. 

German Conservatives, 120. 

"German peril," 62. 

German Workingmen's Party, 179. 

Germania, Die, 208, 375. 

Gnesen Lech, 251. 

Goethe, 52, 93, 218, 317. 

Golden Book of Senators, 106. 

Golden Horn, 58, 91. 

Goltz, Kolmar von der (1843- ), 43. 

Gothein, Georg (1857- ), 174. 



Gotthard, 48. 

Gottingen, 270, 350. 

Grafenstaden, 226. 

Graudenz, 245. 

Gravelotte, 23. 

Great Britain (cf. England), 18, 51, 

270. 
Great Elector, 87. 
Greater Berlin, 301. 
Greater Germany, 61, 212. 
Greater Poland, 39, 45. 
Greater Serbia, 40. 
Greece, 36, 235. 

Grey, Sir Edward (1862- ), 268. 
Grillparzer, 314. 
Guelph party, 117, 120, 122, 123, 140, 

224. 
Guiscard, Robert, 76. 
Gulf of Alexandretta, 92. 
Gumbitmen, 192. 

Gwinner, Arthur von (1856- ), 163. 
Gymnasium, 321, 327-329, 33i, 339, 

351. 

Habsburg, 26, 29, 34, 38. 

Halle, 300, 350. 

HaUesches Tor, 229. 

Hambom, 276. 

Hamburg, 274, 309, 312, 313, 332. 

Hamburger Nachrichten, 374. 

Hammerstein, William, Freiherr von 

(1838-?), 368. 
Handelshochschule, 55, 312. 
Hannoverische Kurier, 372, 375. 
Hanotaux, Gabriele (1853- ), 72. 
Hanover, 58, 102, 117, 122, 123, 225, 

244, 279, 305, 342. 
Hansa League, 93, 274. 
Harden, Maximilian (1861- ), 24, 

108. 
Hauptmann, Gerhart (1862- ), 387. 
Hausbesitzerprivileg, 279. 
Heckenroth, Ludwig (1867- ), 344. 
Heine, Heinrich (1797-1856), 235, 387. 
HelSerich, Karl Theodor (1872- ), 

163. 
Hellenic kingdom, 46. 
Henry IV, Germanic Emperor, 1050- 

1106, 204. 
Henry V, Germanic Emperor, 1106- 

II 25, 65. 



394 



INDEX 



Henry VI, Germanic Emperor, 1165- 
1197, 89. 

Eercynia potash mine, 166, 178. 

Herero, 86, 129. 

Hertling- Georg, Freiherr von ( 1 843- ) , 
208. 

Herzegovina, 28, 30, 34. 

Hesperus, Jean Paul's, 52. 

Hesse-Cassel, 102, 225. 

Hesse (Grand Duchy of Hesse-Darm- 
stadt), 10, 88, 277, 281, 289, 292, 
347, 352, 358. 

Heydebrand, Ernst von (1851- ), 163. 

Hildesheim, 307. 

Hilfschulen, 352. 

Hirsch-Duncker labor unions, 167, 
194. 

Hohenlohe, Chlodowig von H.- 
Schillingfiirst (1819-1901), 115, 
127, 205. 

Hohenstaufen, 48. 

Hohenzollem, 10, 26, 55, 65, 115, 123, 
146, 149. 

Holland, 72, 93. 

Holy Alliance, 27. 

Holy Roman Empire, 65, 89, 219. 

House of Commons, 63, 64. 

House of the Butchers' Guild, Hildes- 
heim, 307. 

housing problem, 294, 300. 

Humboldt Academy, 312. 

Humboldt, Wilhelm von (1767-1835), 
318. 

Himgary, 27, 265. 

illiteracy, German, 14, 323. 
Immaculate Conception, 203. 
Imperial Chancellor, 115, 116, 134. 
Imperial Diet (cf. Reichstag), 119, 120, 

126. 
Imperial Land, 123, 222, 225, 227-230. 
Imperial party, 120, 165, 339- 
imperial prerogative, 104, 106, 107, 

109, no. 
Imperial School Commission, 343. 
Imperial Supreme Court, 66. 
income tax, 170, 376. 
increment tax, 131. 
India, 42, 79, 87, 94. 
inheritance tax, 130, 131, 170, 171, 

376. 



Ionic islands, 46. 

inorganic constitutions, 142. 

intermediate industrial schools, 333. 

internationalism, 197. 

Italy, 19, 28-31, 41-49. 58, 72, 75- 

Itaha Irridenta, 44. 

Italian-Turkish War, 19, 42-44, 48, 91. 

Jagiello, king of Poland, 1386-1434, 

238. 
Jagow, Traugott von (1865- ), 230, 

292. 
Jameson, Leander Starr (1853- ), 56. 
Japanese-Russian War, 33, 37, 62, 264. 
Jena, 3, 193, 270. 
Jean Paul (Richter), 51, 52. 
Jerusalem, 90. 
Jeshurun, 78. 
Jesuits, 201, 206, 208. 
Jews, 197. 

Journalisten, Die, Freytag's, 315-364. 
Julian Alps, 44. 
Junker, 27, 136, 144, 147, 148, 150, 

152, 153, 159, 178. 
Jiiterbog, 13, 192. 

Kaempf, Johannes (1842- ), 136. 

Kamerun, 85. 

Kammerer, 284. 

Karl Eugen (1728-93), Duke of 

Wiirtemberg, 318. 
Karlsruhe, 302, 306. 
Kassubs, 245, 255. 
Kautzky, Karl (1854- ), 186, 
Kiao Chau, 79. 
Kiel, 208. 
Kinderlen-Waechter, Alfred von (1852- 

1912), 18, 126. 
Kipling, 54. 
Kirschner, Martin (1842-1912), 282, 

286. 
Kitchener, Earl (1850- ), 112. 
Kolnische Zeitung, 64, 78, 363, 367, 

372, 374. 379- 
Konia, 92, 93. 
Konigsberg, 269. 
Konigsplatz, Berlin, 122. 
Kopp, Georg, Cardinal (1837-1914), 

210. 
Kreuzzeitung, 145, 155, igo, 367, 

368, 374, 377- 



INDEX 



395 



Kriiger, Paul (1825-1004), 56. 
Krupp, 13, 163, 278, 378. 
Kulturdiinger, 87. 

Kulturkampf, 6, 122, 204, 205, 208, 
209, 216, 242, 258, 260, 353, 357. 

Ladysmith, 58. 

Lagow, 276. 

Lamprecht, Karl (1856-1915), 178. 

Landesschulrat, 341. 

Landrat, 276, 372, 378. 

Landstunn, 342. 

Landtag, Prussian (cf . Prussian Diet), 

143, 144, 155, 166, 169, 189, 190, 202, 

207, 246, 255, 260, 278, 284, 334, 

339- 
Lasalle, Ferdinand (1825-64), 179. 
League of Polish Societies, 254. 
Ledebour, Georg (1850- ), 192. 
Lederer, Hugo, 309. 
Lehrfreiheit, 349. 
Leibniz, 318. 
Leipsic, a, 66, 269, 274, 277, 279, 

280, 299, 304, 306, 308, 311, 315, 

384. 
Leo XIII, Pope, 1878-1903, 204, 209. 
16se majest6, 108, 383. 
Lessing, 314, 386. 
Lessing Academy, 312. 
Levant, 90. 
libel laws, 382, 384. 
Liberal group, 118, 123, 124, 127, 128. 
Liberal-industrial group, 120, 121. 
liberalism, 53, 61, 119. 
Liberals (cf. National Liberals), 10, 

52, 117, 119 159. 
liberal-socialist alliance, 172. 
Lichnowsky, Prince Karl (i860- ), 69. 
Lichtemberger, Henri (1864- ), 24. 
Lieber, Ernst Moritz (1838-1902), 

206. 
Liebknecht, Karl (1871- ), 180, 192. 
Liebknecht, Wilhelm (1826-1900), 179, 

186. 
Liga polska, 252. 

Liman von Sanders, Otto (1855- ), 91. 
Linz, 237. 
Lithuania, 238. 
"little Germans," 86, 88, 174. 
Livonia, 238. 
Lloyd George, David, (1863- ), 62. 



Lombardy, 43. 

London, 74, 274, 363, 368, 372. 

London Conference, 19, 36, 37, 68. 

London Daily Chronicle, 73, 363. 

London Daily Telegraph, 59, in, 373. 

London Standard, 363. 

London Times, 363. 

Lorraine, 3, 4, 23, 220. 

Loubet, Emile (1838- ), 7. 

Louis XIV of France, 219, 220. 

Low Countries 270. 

Luther, 318, 349. 

Lutheran Conservatives, 145. 

Macedonia, 42, 43, 90. 

MacMahon, Count Marie de (1808- 

93), 7- 
Madrid, 58. 
Mafeking, 58. 
Magistrat, 281. 
Magyars, 27, 265. 
Main, 350. 

Maistre, Joseph de (1754-1821), 73. 
Maltese Straits, 43, 48, 89. 
Manchester school, 151, 177. 
Mandel, Kari Wilhehn (1851- ), 226. 
Manila harbor, 76. 
Mannheim, 160, 271, 280, 297. 
Manufacturers' Alliance, German, 165. 
March victims, 183. 
Marcinkowski Association, 242, 243. 
Maritime Alps, 41. 
Marschall von Bieberstein, Adolf 

(1842-1912), 56, 68, 69, 76, 77, 91, 

372. 
Marshall Islands, 86. 
Mars la Tour, 23, 223. 
Marx, Karl (1818-83), 179, 182, 183, 

197- 
Massenet, Jules Emile (1842- ), 24. 
Masurs, 254, 255. 
Mayence, 221, 274, 308. 
meat scarcity, 166, 297. 
Mecklenburg, 128, 142, 245. 
Mecklenburg-Schwerin, 142. 
Mecklenburg-Strelitz, 142. 
Mediterranean, 29, 30, 39, 40. 
Meistersinger, 218. 
Melanchthon, 318. 
Memel, 264. 
Mercier, Auguste (1833- ), 14. 



396 



INDEX 



Mesopotamia, 92, 94, gs, 364. 

Metz, 4, 23, 160, 219, 230-233, 270. 

Meuse, 22, 50. 

Middle Schools, 326, 328. 

Minna von Barnhelm, Lessing's, 315. 

Mirza Schafy, Songs of, Bodenstedt's, 

93- 
Moltke, Hellmuth von (1800-91), 4, 5. 
Montenegro, 35, 36, 45. 
Mon Village, Waltz', 228. 
Moravians, 38. 
Morocco, 8, 11, 42, 62, 63, 65, 66, 

74, 78, 83, 114, 130, 183, 373. 
Moselle, 4, 22, 218, 220, 221, 230, 263. 
Most, Otto (1881- ), 272, 312. 
Mosul, 92. 
Motu proprio, 207. 
Mukden, 32. 
Miilhausen, 233. 

MUnchner Allegemeine Zeitung, 78. 
Miinchner Neueste Nachrichten, 375. 
MUnchner Zeitung, 370. 
Munich, 58, 269, 300, 303, 314, 315, 

369, 381. 
Municipal, cf. City. 

Naples, 305. 

Napoleon I (1769-1821), 2, 53, 218, 

275- 
Napoleon III (1808-1873), 28, 29, 218. 
National Assembly, Bordeaux, 3, 217. 
National Democratic Party, Polish, 

261. 
National Liberal Party, 53, 118, 124, 

125, 130, 131, 133, 152, 153, 157, 

165, 169, 170, 179, 212, 216, 280, 

37S, 377- 

Naumann, Friedrich (i860- ), 107, 
120, 174. 

Naumburg, 340. 

Navy League, 61. 

neo-bourgeoisie, French, 8. 

Neue Zeit, 186. 

New Guinea, 85. 

New Kamerun, 19. 

"newspaper German," 385. 

Nicholas I (1841- ), king of Montene- 
gro, 35, 45- 

Niemen, 33. 

Nietzsche, Friedrich (1844-1900), 96. 

Nijni Novgorod, 274. 



Nile, 95. 

nine-year schools, 327-329. 

Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, 367, 

371, 372. 
Nord und Slid, 360. 
North Africa, 43, 58. 
North German, 161, 196. 
North German Confederation, 10, loi, 

102, 140, 161, 179, 203. 
North Sea, 3, 50, 63, 65, 66, 89, 93, 

94. 
Nuremberg, 274, 307. 
Nuremberg Convention, 189. 

Oberrealschule, 327, 329, 331. 

octroi, 293. 

Oder, iss, 264. 

Old Age Pension Act, 181. 

Old Catholics, 203. 

Old Liberal Alliance, 172. 

Old Mark, 121. 

"Oncle Hansi," 228. 

one-year volunteer examination, 319, 

343- 
one-year volunteers, 327, 343, 344. 
open ballot, 143, 149. 
Ordensland, 238. 
Orvieto, 305. 

Paasche, Hermann (1852- ), 170. 

Panama, 15. 

Pan-German, 22, 55, 63, 65, 88, g6, 

231. 
Pan-Slavic, 245, 264. 
Panther, 18. 
papal infallibility, 203. 
Papal State, 203. 
parcellation banks, 253. 
Paris, IS, 21, 363, 367, 368, 373, 381, 

385. 
paritatic schools, 352, 355. 
paternal despotism, 274, 286. 
peace of Frankfort, 4, 9, 217; of Rys- 

wick, 219; of Thorn, 238. 
Peninsular Campaign, 51. 
"perfidious Albion," 51. 
Persia, 94, 95. 
Persian GuK, 94. 
Peters, Karl (1856- ), 85. 
Picardy, 220. 
Pichon, Stephen (1857- ), 115. 



f 



INDEX 



397 



Pius IX, Pope, 1846-1878, 203, 204. 

Place de la Concorde, 230. 

Platen, Count August von (1796- 
183s), 235. 

Po Valley, 48. 

Poincar6, Raymond (i860- ), 7, 

US- 
Point du Jour, 23. 

Poland, 234, 264. 

Poles, 38, 39, 120, 14s, 212, 224, 232, 
234-266, 338. 

police power, 286-292. 

Polish Catholic Workingmen's Clubs, 
252. 

Polish danger, 264, 265. 

Polish provinces, 237, 240-266, 325, 
3SO. 

Polish school strike, 258, 259. 

Pomerania, 121, 158, 254, 257, 317. 

population of Germany, 81, 82. 

Port Arthur, 32. 

Porta Pia, 29. 

Posadowsky, Arthur, Count von 
(1845- ), 164. 

Posen, 117, 123, 220, 236, 240, 241, 
243, 246, 247, 257, 260, 263, 264. 

press, German, 17, 20, 21, 58, 70, 74, 
78, 359-388. 

Press Ordinances of 1863, 367. 

Prinetti, Nobile Giulio (1851- ), 
44. 

Probekandidat, Der, Ernst's, 354. 

Progressive People's Party, 118, 173, 
174- 

Progymnasium, 327, 328. 

Prorealgymnasium, 328. 

protective duties, 128, 152, 153. 

Prussia, growth of, 8, 9; England 
and, 51; in the empire, 104, 105, 
107; agrarians of, 128, 147-155 
constitution of, 134, 142, 145, i8g 
rural labor laws in, 148, 149, 243 
electoral reform, 149; Roman 
Catholics in, 201, 204, 205; Poles 
in, 235-265; cities of, 270, 275- 
277, 279, 285, 286, 288, 290-292 ; 
schools of, 320, 322, 323, 334, 337, 
342, 346-351, 355-358: press of, 
361, 383- 

Prussian Diet (cf. Landtag), 53, loi, 
119, 127, 156, 167, 190, 147. 



public lecture courses, 312. 
Puster Valley, 237 . 

Queen Victoria, 53, 65, in. 

Raczynski, Count, 242. 

Radical-commercial group, 120, 121. 

Radical party, 53, 61, 118, 119, 124, 
125, 129, 133, 145, 153, 157, 165, 
166, 172, 173, 195, 276, 290, 356, 
377- 

Ratisbon, 274. 

Ratsherr, 281. 

Ratzel, Friedrich (1844-1904), 273. 

Realgymnasium, 331, 339. 

Realschule, 327, 328, 331, 332, 339, 
340. 

reciprocity treaties, 152, 153. 

Reform Gymnasium, 331. 

Reichsanzeiger, 370. 

Reichspartei, 120, 156. 

Reichsrat, 38. 

Reichstag, military bills in, 10, 11; 
anti-British debates, 64; criticizes 
German diplomacy, 75 ; powers of, 
101-104; criticizes the Emperor, 
111-113; party formation in, 116- 
133; parliamentary weakness of, 
133-138; influenced by industrial 
interests, 165-167 ; Social Democrats 
in, 191 ; Roman Catholic party in, 
202 ; takes revenue away from cities, 

293- 
Reichstag building, 308. 
"reinsurance agreement," 31. 
religious instruction in schools, 353- 

356. 
"reptile funds," 368. 
Residenz, 288. 

Renter's Bureau, 73, 363, 371. 
Reutter, Colonel, 229, 230. 
revanche, 7. 
revisionists, Social Democratic, 178, 

188, 198. 
Revue des deux Mondes, 360. 
Rheinwestfalische Zeitung, 378. 
Rhine, 22, 122, 155, 221, 269, 272, 275, 

350. 
Rhineland, 81, 144, 154, 159, 277, 280. 
Rhine League of Cities, 274. 
Rhine Palatinate, 362. 



398 



INDEX 



Rhine Province, i6o, 276. 

Rhine- Westphalian district, 166, 167, 

271, 300. 
Richelieu, 43. 
Richter, Eugene (1838-1906), 117, 124, 

133. 
Riga, 237. 
river tolls, 155. 

Roberts, Earl (1832-1915), 112. 
Robespierre, 51. 
rolnik, 253. 
Roman Catholic Church, 117, 197, 200, 

201-216, 246. 
Rome, 30, so, 74, 363, 367, 368. 
Roon, Count Albrecht von (1803-79), 

13- 
Rostock, 350. 
Royal Colonization Commission, 247, 

249, 252. 
Royal Decree of 1900, 331. 
Ruhr, 161, 194, 189. 
rural communes, 276. 
rural labor laws, 148, 149, 265. 
Russia, 7, II, 27, 28, 30-37, 39-41, 

54, 81, 200, 239, 240, 264, 323, 369. 
Russian Poland, 240, 241, 244, 260. 
Russo-Japanese War, 33, 37, 62, 264. 
Ruthenians, 38, 39, 263. 
Ryswick, peace of, 219. 

Saar, 231. 

Saarbriicken, 160. 

Sachsenganger, 244, 252. 

Sadowa, 7. 

Saloniki, 36. 

Samoa, 74, 85. 

Sanjak of Novibazar, 36. 

Sarajevo, 40, 69. 

Savoy, 29. 

Saxony, S3, 81, 159, 161, 245, 271, 272, 

279, 285, 292, 327, 334, 339, 345, 

347, 348. 
Scheidemann, Philip (1865- ), 135, 

136, 191- 
Schiller, 309, 315. 
Schlafstelle, 304. 
Schleswig-Holstein, 117, 123, 221, 225, 

264, 270, 281. 
SchmoUer, Gustav von (1838- ), 

271, 301. 
school boards, 337, 338. 



School Conference of 1890, 331, 334. 

school strike, Polish, 258, 259. 

school synods, 341. 

Schopenhauer, 385. 

Schul-Pforta, 340. 

Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, 141, 186, 188. 

Schwetz on the Vistula, 257. 

"scrap of paper," 70. 

Scutari, 45. 

secondary schools, 321, 326, 327, 338, 
341, 343, 344, 347, 35i- 

Second Balkan War, 26. 

Sedan, 4. 

semi-official press, 370-373. 

Septermat, 10, 205, 209, 217. 

Serbia, 19, 34, 35, 38, 45, 68, 373. 

Sesenheim, 218. 

Settlement Law, 254. 

Sevastopol, 7. 

Seven Years' War, 32, 51. 

Sheik of Koweit, 94, 95. 

Shuster, Morgan (1877- ), 94. 

Sick Insurance Act, 181. 

Sieges-Allee, 308. 

Silesia, 117, 121, 123, 159, 211, 213, 
238, 241, 248, 254, 257, 270, 272, 317. 

Simplicissimus, 381. 

simultan schools, 352, 355. 

"sixteen to ten" policy, 67. 

six-year schools, 327, 328. 

Slovaks, 38. 

Slovenes, 38. 

Social Democratic Workingmen's party, 
179. 

Social Democrats, anti-national atti- 
tude of, 60, 61, 86, 97, 116; attack 
the crown, 107, 108, iii, 135, 138, 
157, 191, 192; attack the Prussifin 
constitution, 134, 189-191 ; attract 
radical spirits, 119, 195-196; his- 
tory and growth of, 118, 177-183; 
antagonize all other parties, 130, 131, 
171, 172, 188, 195-197; participate 
in government of smaller states, 141 ; 
enter Prussian Landtag, 145, 189- 
191 ; support labor interests in 
parliament, 167-169, 192-199; dis- 
cipline and doctrinarianism, 184, 
185; gradual modification of pro- 
gram, 185-189; begin to develop 
a national spirit, 197-199. 



INDEX 



399 



socialism, 177. 

socialists of the chair, 177. 

Socialist-Proletarian group, 120, 121. 

Society of Jesus, 208, 238. 

sokol, 253. 

Solifemo, 28. 

Solomon Islands, 86. 

Sorbs, 237. 

South Africa, 57, 59, 264. 

South African republics, 56, 112. 

South German, 140, 156, 173, 189, 

179, 298. 
South Morocco, 89. 
South Sea Protectorate, 86. 
South Seas, 85. 
South Slavs, 41. 

Southwest Africa, 54, 85, 86, 129. 
Sozialistische Monatshefte, 184, 186. 
Spahn, Peter (1846- ), 135, 136. 
Spain, 58, 86, 200. 
Sporades, 46. 
St. Isidore Clubs, 252. 
St. Petersburg, 31, 35, 74, 381. 
St. Privat, 23, 233. 
Stadtrat, 281. 
Stadtverordneten, 278. 
Stargard, 245. 
Statthalter, 222. 
Stein, Heinrich Karl, Freiherr von 

(1757-1831), 275. 
Strasburg, 4, 23, 106, 177, 226, 270, 

288, 298, 300, 302, 304, 305. 
Strasburg University, 225. 
Stuttgart, 269, 280, 281, 306, 318. 
Styria, 38. 

Suddeutsche Monatshefte, 360. 
sugar taxes, 131. 
Swabian League of Cities, 274. 
Switzerland, 72. 
syndicates, 162, 165, 166. 

Tdgliche Rundschau, 64, 372, 374. 

Tangier, 17, 79. 

Tannenberg, 238. 

tariff legislation, 152, 159. 

tariff on foodstuffs, 152, 297, 376. 

Taurus mountains, 92, 93. 

teachers' exchange, 25. 

technical universities, 271, 312, 332, 

333- 
"terrible year," 56, 217. 



Teutonic Knights, 237, 238, 247, 308. 

Tews, J. (i860- ), 347. 

Thaddeus of Warsaw, Jane Porter's, 

235- 
The Man Who Was, Kipling's, 54. 
Thiers, Louis Adolphe (1797-1877), 

3, 5, 217. 
Thionville, 233. 
third republic, 5. 
Thirty Years' War, 139, 219. 
Thorn, peace of, 238, 245. 
three class system, Prussian, 143, 189, 

278. 
Three Emperors' Agreement, 27, 31. 
Three Years' Service Law, French, 12, 

20. 
Thuringia, 97, 271, 272. 
Thyssen, August (1840- ), 163. 
Tiergarten, Berlin, 308, 309. 
Tigris, 69, 94. 
Togo, 85. 
Toul, 3, 23. 

Transbalkan Railway, 36. 
Transvaal, 56. 

Treitschke, Heinrich von (1834-96), 96. 
Treptow, 183, 187. 
Treves, 221. 
Triest, 44. 
Triple Alliance, 17, 28, 30, 32, 42- 

48, S9, 62, 72. 
Triple Entente, 24, 42, 48, 62. 
Tripoli, 19, 42, 47, 58. 
Tunis, 16, 19, 30. 
Tyrol, 38, 44. 
Turin, 29, 48. 

Turkey, 36, 46, 58, 74, go, gi. 
"two for one" policy, 66. 

Ullstein, Louis, 380. 
Ulm, 302. 

Ultra-conservatives, 145, 148, 156. 
unearned increment tax, 131, 293. 
imiconfessional schools, 350. 
United States, 85, 270, 359. 
univeral suffrage, 102, 213.^ 
universities, German, 271, 312, 349. 
university extension, 312. 
Urville, 225. 

Velhagen und Klasings Monatshefte, 360. 
Venetia, 28, 42, 



400 



INDEX 



"Verbotens, " 221, 287. 

Verdun, 13, 23, 263. 

Verein fiir Wohnungsreform, 301. 

Versailles, 6, 24, 140. 

veterinary schools, 271. 

Victor Emmanuel II (1820-78), 

king of Italy, 27, 30, 203. 
Victor Emmanuel III (1869- ), king 

of Italy, 45. 
Victoria (1840-1901), Crown Princess 

of Prussia, German Empress, 54. 
Vienna, 26, 31, 35, 237. 
Vigo, 323. 
Vionville, 23. 

Virchow, Rudolf (1821-1902), 204. 
Vistula, 33, 37, so, IS5, 238, 264. 
viva voce vote, 279. 
vocational schools, 333, 334. 
Volksschule, 14, 260, 311, 314, 321, 

322, 326, 327, 330, 332, 333-335. 

337-352, 357, 358. 
Vollmar, Georg Heinrich von (1850- ), 

187. 
Vorschule, 327. 

Vorwdrts, Berlin, 184, 374, 376. 
Vosges, 4, 10, 221. 
Vossische Zeitung, Berlin, 375, 386, 

387. 
vote of censure, 137. 
vote to the Left, 196. 

Wacht am Rhein, 218. 
Wagner, Adolf (1835- ), 177. 
Waldeck-Rousseau, Pierre Marie (1846- 

1904), 7- 
Waldersee, Count Alfred von (1832- 

1904), 88, 89. 
Walther von der Vogelweide, 207. 
Waltz, Jakob (Jean Jacques) (1873- ), 

238. 
war indemnity, 3, 5. 
Wars of Liberation, 51. 
Warsaw, 235, 236, 240. 
Warthe, 238. 

Washington, 68, 74, 363, 370, 373. 
Waterloo, 51. 
Water Poles, 254. 



Wawrzyniak, 254. 

Weimar, 270, 314, 347. 

Weimar Volkszeitung, 193. 

Wends, 237. 

Wermuth, Adolf (1855- ), 283. 

Weser, 155. 

West Africa, 63. 

West Prussia, 117, 121, 123, 239, 240, 

241, 243, 247, 254, 257, 263, 

264. 
Westostlicher Divan, Goethe's, 93. 
Westphalia, 81, 159, 161, 206, 213, 

244, 254, 255, 261, 280; treaty of, 

219, 220. ^ 
Wetterle, Emile (1861- ), 225, 232. 
white slave traffic, 214. 
Wiesbaden, 352. 
Wilhelm Meister, Goethe's, 52. 
Wilhelm Tell, Schiller's, 59, 315. 
William of Wied (1877- ), Prince of 

Albania, 36, 46. 
William I (1797-1888), German 

Emperor, 3, 6, loi, 104, 105, 180. 
William II (1859- >, German 

Emperor, 15, 16, 32, 55, 56, 59, 85, 

88, 89, 90, 105-113, 134, 136, 182, 

191, 20s, 224, 229, 336, 373. 
Windthorst, Ludwig (1812-91), 117, 

122, 202, 205, 206, 209. 
Wolff's Bureau, 74, 362, 363, 370, 371, 

379- 
woman's suffrage, 198. 
Worth, 219. 
Wiirtemberg, 4, 10, 140, 141, 188, 203, 

277, 279, 281, 288, 358. 
Wiirzburg, 270. 

Young Liberal Association, 172. 
Young Turks, 90, 93. 

Zabem, 136, 229. 

Zentralverband deutscher Industrielle, 

16s. 
Zet, 252. 

Zukunft, Berlin, 24, 108. 
Zweckverband, 296. 
Zwischenrufe, 138. 



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justly. The author emphasizes the importance of an in- 
telligent understanding of the subject, believing that in 
spite of the present lull owing to acute interest in Euro- 
pean affairs, it is yet a problem that will periodically and 
persistently come to the fore until it is satisfactorily 
solved. Professor Abbott has given careful study to Far 
Eastern matters for the past fifteen years, has traveled at 
various times throughout the Orient and previous to the 
Russian War was an instructor in the Imperial Japanese 
Naval Academy. 



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IMPORTANT NEW WORKS OF BIOGRAPHY 

The Life of Andrew Jackson 

By JOHN SPENCER BASSETT, Ph.D. 

With Illustrations. New Edition. Two Volumes in 

One 

Cloth, 8vo, $2.50 

This is a one-volume edition of a biography that has, 
since its first publication several years ago, come to be 
regarded as one of the most faithful stories of Jackson's 
life and of its effect on the nation that has ever been writ- 
ten. Professor Bassett has not slighted Jackson's failings 
or his virtues ; he has tried to refrain from commenting 
upon his actions ; he has sought to present a true picture 
of the political manipulations which surrounded Jackson 
and in which he was an important factor. The volume 
contributes largely to a clearer realization not only of the 
character of a great man but also of the complex period in 
which he lived. 

The Writings of John Quincy Adams 

Volume VI. Edited by 
WORTHINGTON C. FORD 

Cloth, Bvo, $3.50 

This volume brings Mr. Ford's remarkable series up to 
the year 1821. Mr. Adams's last dispatches from London, 
while minister there, deal with the matters left undeter- 
mined by the Treaty of Ghent and with his association with 
the English reformers of the day, -— c 



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